Loosey Goosey

Remember when I wrote about loving pregnancy...pregnancy after morning sickness. Well, I'm not the only one to remember things about it. Evidently, my body remembers a thing or too as well. Towards the end of my first time around with Aloria, the 37lbs I gained really caught up with my well loosened joints. I remember my hips hurting soooo badly by the end that I could barely walk without extreme limpage going on. If I got going, I'd do okay for a while, but as soon as I would sit down and then get back up, I was pretty sure I was going to break a hip. The doctor told me that the added amounts of estragen that the body makes in preparation for delivery help to loosen the ligaments so that they will be able to stretch and pull so your bones can spread far enough apart to get the baby out. ...which is a pretty amazing thing, actually! But because they loosen, you feel a lot of twinges and pulling when you do simple things too, such as sneeze, cough, or bend the wrong way...which ordinarily may have been the right way, only now it just feels wrong.

This time around, I have heard a lot of things from seasoned mothers about second, third, fourth, etc pregnancies. Basically, everything happens a whole lot sooner because your body is more intuned with what to do, and it does it better because it is already pretty stretched, bent, and loosened up from the first time. So I had been experiencing the same really bad hip pain...only earlier. This is sad to me because I still have three and a half months to go, and was pretty sure if this progressed, I'd be in a wheel chair by the end of it all. I wonder if Medicaid would send me one of those motorchairs that Aaron always makes fun of. ...or if it would look bad for me to start scooting around on one of the motor carts at the grocery store at only 6 months along. Hmmmm. Well, anyway...I said that I "had" been experiencing this pain. I decided to try and do something about it after Aaron said that it was sad to watch me walk around...pathetic actually...because I was limping so badly. I had gone on a couple of walks (which I should be doing regularly but don't), but I limped more the next day...so I thought I would try some hip and butt exercises since those were the muscles surrounding the pained area. I get on all fours and lift my leg three different ways in three different directions ten times each on each side. So while my leg is still bent, I lift it ten times to the side (then the other leg), then from bent I stretch it up and straight past my butt at a diagonal ten times (then the other leg), then from bent position and keeping it bent I lift it up so that my thigh is parallel with my back and do sort of butt crunches by doing small movements pushing my foot to the ceiling (and then of course the other leg). I wrote this out for any of you who are pregnant or get pregnant and have hip pain like I do. ...and I say "do," because the pain is not actually gone gone...but I can walk without limping that much and I can stand on just my right leg again. It was getting so bad before that I couldn't support myself on just that leg...I was getting afraid of falling in the shower because I have to lift one leg over the tub at a time, but whichever I do first, my right leg will at some point have to support me.

Seriously though, after the first day of doing the exercises (morning and night), I felt a difference. I also noticed that my butt was experienceing that burning sensation after number 2 of 10...so I decided that I was pretty sure I didn't have butt muscles :-) for sad.... which is probably why I couldn't support the pressure I was experiencing on my hips. Now it doesn't hurt until #8, and I'm upping my count to twelve. So now, instead of wheeling myself into the hospital, I will walk in. I look forward to that...and to maybe getting an actual butt out of this instead of what I have now, which is nothing more then a seat cushion...which, incedently, isn't all that cushy!