Its starting to get painful...

When I was pregnant with Ava, I found out that I had SPD - Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction. Sounds fun huh? Basically, when you are pregnant, your body produces a hormone called relaxin. It is supposed to give your pelvic bone (the symphysis pubis- the joint in the front of your pelvis and the sacroiliac- the joint in the back of your pelvis) a little bit of give while your baby grows. What SPD is when your body produces too much relaxin and your pelvic bone gives too much. It isn't serious, but it is extremely painful. I can usually keep the pain to a minimum by keeping my knees together for the most part. Like going up a step at a time, sitting down to put pants on, rolling over in bed (which is probably the worst pain of all) with my legs completely straight, etc. If I do a lot of walking one day, the pain will flare up later on in the day. It's not horrible, its just annoying, especially day after day.

When I was pregnant with Ava, there wasn't a lot of information on SPD, and if I talked to my doctor about it, he told me it was just normal pregnancy stuff. I found some info on it on the internet but not much. But I did find quite a few other women who had that same pain. All I know was that by the end of my pregnancy, I was fed up. You can't take anything but Tylenol when you're pregnant, and Tylenol does nothing for me. The bigger Ava got, the more painful it got. It felt like someone was pulling my pelvic bone apart. I was pretty much ready to evict Ava by any and all means. I stuck it out all the way to my due date when I finally went into labor. I had Ava a day after my due date and the pain was completely gone after I had her. I can't tell you what a relief that was!

So, when I was about 12 weeks pregnant with Smalls here, I started to get some of the symptoms. Clicking hip bones, small bursts of pain rolling over in bed, and a general stiffness in my pelvic area. I sat in the bathroom and cried. The worst thing (and only real problem I had) with pregnancy was SPD. And here it was again. I hated whining about it, complaining about the pain. I hated people doing things for me. I just wanted to have an enjoyable pregnancy! So now I am resigned to having this again. There is a lot more information on the web about it. And when I mentioned it to my nurse practitioner, she knew exactly what I was talking about. So that is really encouraging. So now there are several things I can do to relieve my pain, different things I can try to help, and they are working pretty well so far. I'm determined to enjoy this pregnancy even through this if I have to.

I'm 20 weeks now, and in the last few days, I have felt a lot more pain. I'm having a hard time getting up from sitting without pain. I have to ask Todd to help me up. Lifting one leg, especially my left causes me a bit more pain. Rolling over in bed, as always, is the worst pain. I can't figure out how to really do it without pain. Last night, I thought "I'm starting to dread going to sleep." Pregnancy doesn't give you a comfortable sleep in the first place, but if I can't even turn over without pain, it sucks. I remember last time with Ava, towards the end, just screaming every time I had to turn over. I'm really hoping that it doesn't get to that point.

All I know is, I'm going to try everything I can to keep the pain from getting as bad as it was with Ava. I really want to enjoy this pregnancy, and so far I really am. I'd like to keep it that way.

Ok, I'm done whining. Haha!