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Hip Pain after Pregnancy-Anyone Experience this?
Good Evening Ladies, my son is two years old and this past summer I started experiencing pain in my right hip. It started with my hip popping, which was annoying but not painful but the last few months pain has set in. At first I thought it was pain from kick boxing, but the pain spread to my pelvis as well. I had a pelvic exam to rule out anything abnormal and nothing showed. Anyway, I thought back to right after I had my son and realized I had pain in my hip but it went away, so I thought. I googled hip pain after pregnancy and I learned that it is quite common and is call SPD (symphsis pubis disfunction) (sp). Have any of you ladies experienced this and if so, what was your course of treatment. TIA
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Re: Hip Pain after Pregnancy-Anyone Experience this?
My symphysis pubis seperated to an extreme degree at 24w pregnant with DS. After he was born, my pelvis came back together assymetrically and then would shift of its own accord, impacting my SI joint as well. I did months of 3x per week chiro care and months of weekly pelvic physical therapy. I still have daily pain, but not like I had before. I was living at about a 7 on a 1-10 pain scale for 5 months post-partum. Now I am more like a 3.
The thing that is throwing me is that you are describing the pain as mostly in your hip, not in your pelvis. The PS is under your mons pubis and above the clitoris--distincly in the pelvic region, not the hip (albiet, the other ligaments of the pelvis, like the SI are frequently impacted alongside the PS).
A pelvic ultrasound can show if there is an extreme gap in the PS, but because a gap is normal in all post-partum women and the size of the gap does not coorelate with pain, it is not necessarily helpful to do that.
If indeed you do have SPD (which is actually called pelvic girdle pain (PGP) or pelvic instability these days), finding a mainstream US doctor to take your seriously may be difficult. Even to this day, with a diagnosis from a physical med doctor, I just had an OB/GYN essentially tell me that this was in my head/there is nothing that can be done (this is a common experience with PGP. I have had 5 OB/GYNs tell me the same thing--thank goodness I didn't listen to them!)
So, what can you do? See a chiro who specializes in pregnancy-related care, core-strengthening, a physical medicine doctor may be able to observe if your body is not moving properly and prescribe pelvic PT. For pain managment, accupuncture, biofeedback/relaxation, and an anti-inflammatory diet (think The Zone diet), vitamins/herbs that promote healing and anti-inflammation (magnesium, Vitamin D, fish oil). Some people are comfortable with shots or daily meds, but I am not. I am concerned that masking the pain will cause me to not heed my body's warnings and thus truly injure myself.
In terms of more extreme measures, Capitol Spine and Back has two doctors: Friedless (I think that is his name) and Wagner who are experts in prolotherapy for this. Dr. Wagner was very helpful to me and I started looking into it, but it is VERY expensive, not covered by insurance, and a big process. Also, it cannot be done while nursing because nursing keeps the body loose, so treatment will not be effective. So, for me it wasn't a fit.
In the UK, where several doctors are doing research on this, some women do plating. I don't know much about it, but there is a Google group/listserve for pelvic instability that is sometimes helpful.
Also, here are some websites.
https://www.pelvicinstability.org.uk/
https://pelvicgirdlepain.com/
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