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Aches and pain of pregnancy

[00:00:00] Hello, it's Tuesday. I actually took a legit day, not only out of the office cause I'm off two out of three Tuesdays, but I didn't like look at my texts. I spent the day with my mom and my sister. It was awesome. Okay, I'm gonna do a quick video on the normal aches and pains in pregnancy cuz there's like a ton. 

So these are the most, most of the ones that happen, especially in the second trim. with each ensuing pregnancy, these things can happen. It seems earlier and more intensely to the point where I joke when my second moms, my second time moms say, I don't understand why I feel so much worse. I'm like, um, I don't understand why you don't understand that. 

You are now carrying a second baby while chasing after a toddler, right? Like your first pregnancy, you come home. If you're working full-time, maybe you put your feet up and rest, but you're not chasing. Your second pregnancy, you're either all day chasing that kid or you're working, coming home and chasing that kid. 

So again, [00:01:00] second time moms, you might know this, all those aches and pains more intense and earlier, so early in the pregnancy, the aches and pains are like cramps, like a period again. If you have really bad pain on one side or the other and you haven't yet seen your doctor to make sure the pregnancy's inside, you should go see your doctor outside of that first trimester cramps, like a period. 

A lot of pressure on your. Usually that's not a uti, but you should check that out with your doctor if you feel pressure, but not burning and feeling like you have to pee the way you would with a normal, regular, non-pregnant uti. It's very common, but again, talk to your doctor if it seems more intense because you will have more pressure on your bladder even early on when that baby is just a little nugget because your kidneys are filtering more fluid. 

So that's the first trimester. Those are mostly the aches and pains in the first trimester. Again, cramps like a period, feeling like I have to. Second trimester, that's when it all starts, in fact, second trimester and for some, not until end of second trimester, early third [00:02:00] trimester. And these are the things that I try to, and if I didn't do this with any of you guys as my patients, I'm sorry, but I try to kind of preemptively say, especially by 26 to 28 weeks when I catch them at the visit where we discuss a lot of other things going into the third trimester, I'll try to preemptively say things like, here's what's really normal. 

You might. A lot of pulling and tugging in your groin. That's because the ligaments that come off the top of your uterus and insert into your groin, the round ligaments, as your uterus grows and stretches, they're gonna pull and tug, and they're gonna feel like when you flip over, you're gonna feel sometimes like you think it's snapping. 

It feels horrible, but it is absolutely not. . And so my rule of thumb for all of these is if you're not bleeding and if you're feeling the baby move and if you rest and drink water and change positions and the aches and pains kind of resolve, then you're probably okay. But ask your doctor, I'm not your doctor. 

So again, round ligament pain coming off the top of your uterus. They insert [00:03:00] into your groin. Those are the round ligaments, and as they pull and stretch, as the uterus grows, it hurts like a mother. Sometimes you'll even think when you've sneezed that something might have exploded. I remember my first pregnancy coming outta the bathroom in my office, telling one of my partners. 

I'm pretty sure my ovary just exploded, but I'm still standing, so I think it's okay. And that was probably that ligament. When I sneezed with the intraabdominal pressure, it got. Again, not dangerous. Just super uncomfortable. The second thing you'll feel also related to ligaments is that your sacrum has a ligament called the utero sacro ligament that is attached back of the uterus to the front of the sacrum, which is that bone right there, right? 

And that when your uterus, again, grows and pulls and tugs, especially when you have what's called lordosis, where your spine gets curved forward, you'll have a lot of pulling and tugging. At the end of the day, you'll kind of feel like, Ugh, just an ache. Pubic bone, so your pubic bone comes together in the midline. 

Okay, I had to restart. So your pubic bone comes together in the [00:04:00] midline like this, and there's the synthesis pubic, and that's the cartilage that connects the two sides of the pelvis. Right here in the pubic bone down there. So when you're pregnant, that can spread apart. So it's called synthesis, pubic separation. 

And as you can guess, it's really painful. So the common things that people will say God, like when they touch right there and they push right there, right on top of where the pubic bone is. It really hurts when they sit up in bed or lie back in bed because imagine this bone is like grinding back and forth like that. 

When they're trying to move in bed, like side to side, they're gonna feel that bone. , super painful, not dangerous. You can try to get one of those either belly bands or the type of thing that splints together your hips to try to keep it from spreading apart. Um, and that can offer some relief, but. It's not foolproof. 

And then the fourth, as I joke, is like someone has kicked you in the baine. It just feels like a horse or something, like [00:05:00] you got kicked up there. So that's super painful. And that's typically just from the head pushing on all the pelvic muscles and nerves. Sometimes you'll actually notice a little like. 

Um, tingling, almost like a scratching, electrical shocky feeling. And that can be, if the baby's breached, like the feet will be kicking down on your bladder. So that just feels weird. Like I've experienced that and that's not even something medical I learned. That was just something that I had. And then there's the leg cramps. 

Lord have mercy. The leg cramps. If you've never experienced them, then you, like me, might think pre-children, how bad could they be? I would hear patients saying how bad they were, and I. I believe them. So many people say it, but like how bad could a leg cramp be? Oh, I'm sure that if any of you have had it, you are nodding your head cuz it is bad. 

And not only during pregnancy, but sometimes it continues. So now not pregnant, my last child is nine and a half. I will sometimes have that same feeling and it's basically like cleanness. It means the muscle is completely [00:06:00] contracted. So in your calfs it can happen. I get it. Feet and in my toes, I occasionally get in my hands, but not as much. 

And in my abdominal wall muscles, patients will often notice it at night, but it could be in my case, for example, when I wear flat shoes, when I'm leaning over, sometimes if you're like, like straining with your abdominal muscles either to lift something or to have a bowel movement, you notice some contraction of that muscle, or again, in your calf. 

Massaging it can help stretching out your calf before you go to sleep. Magnesium, which you've heard me talk about anyway. Magnesium at night can actually really help. So, hydration, magnesium, I hear people talk about calcium and potassium as well. So you could always have a banana. You could take some calcium pills or have some dairy, but it seems by and large, like magnesium is what really helps the most. 

So again, let's review during that second to third trimester. Long pain like that, pulling and tugging pain in your groin, that weird pulling and tugging pain in your sacrum. Those are all from the ligaments, the synthesis, pubis separat. Super [00:07:00] painful from the cartilage in the middle of your pubic bone separating apart, and then that feeling like someone kicked you in the vagina. 

So those are kind of the four common aches and pains that patients will have. Then once you get later into the third trimester, when you're getting closer to maybe going into labor, so let's say anytime past 32 to 36 weeks, you might start having Braxton Hicks, which we typically. False labor or painless contractions, which again, a bit of a misnomer. 

I consider Braxton Hicks to be anything where your belly is hard and tight, not exactly painful, but still really uncomfortable or cramps, like a period, but not hard and tight all over. Those are variations of. False labor, meaning contractions that are not leading to labor. They are not regular, repetitive, painful contractions that will put you into labor. 

That said, if they are regular and repetitive, the best thing to do is drink a lot of water, lay down and rest when they go away, that's a sign that they're really nothing. Other things that can happen is early in the pregnancy, you might have a [00:08:00] wicked. Headaches can occur rarely because the hormone level drops if you're in that first trimester, uh, meaning, meaning your estrogen level, all of a sudden precipitously drops in that first trimester, like at seven or eight weeks, and that rarely can mean a miscarriage, but much more often. 

It means you gave up your caffeine and when you give up caffeine, you get a headache. And you don't remember that. So you call frantic cuz you have a terrible headache and in reality it's because you gave up your cuppa, Joe. And we would say you can have your coffee cuz 200 to 300 milligrams of caffeine is safe. 

And headaches in general during pregnancy can actually go one of two ways. They can either get much, much better. Patients who have migraines actually sometimes get better because the hormones just change them or they get much worse. So we're not gonna discuss headaches, but that's just also another common pregnancy. 

The most common ones are the ones that I said all those aches and pains. And again, rule of thumb that I tell my patients is if you're not bleeding and if the baby is still moving and those pains and aches respond to rest and hydration, then I'm not worried. You guys should call your [00:09:00] doctor if you have those because you wanna make sure that they're okay. 

Okay? I hope that helps. Bye bye.