Emotional Support Sisters

The last time I posted I started talking about hypermobility. I’m going to dive a little deeper into the effects of hypermobility and various aspects of my life in the next few posts I, Missy, write.

I have talked a little bit about injuries due to hypermobility, but pregnancy is really where hypermobility started to cause long-term chronic issues. So that is where I’ll start today.

In pregnancy, the body produces a hormone called relaxin. It helps relax and loosen muscles, ligaments, and joints so that the body can stretch and move to accommodate a growing baby. Guess what happens when too-lax ligaments get told to relax even more? They relax even more and it becomes really hard for your body to hold itself together. It also hurts a lot.

In my first 2 pregnancies, I had some pain and some balance issues. Things that are fairly common with pregnancy even if you’re not hypermobile. While I was recovering from the second birth, my ligaments didn’t tighten up very well and I sprained my ankle. It was the ankle I had previously fixed with surgery. I was terrified that I’d need surgery to fix it. I didn’t want to have the surgery. It would have been 3 weeks of no weight bearing on the injured leg. I had a 20-month-old and an infant. There was no way I could do it. I went to the doctor and he gave me a boot for a few weeks. He told me I was lucky because 20 years earlier I would have been in a cast for 6 weeks. The good news was I wouldn’t need surgery.

Through my third pregnancy, I struggled with pain and instability. As I have mentioned I had 3 babies in 3 years. Between the birth of baby 2 and getting pregnant with number 3, there were only 6 months. That was not enough time for my body to tighten back up and restabilize. By the last trimester of my 3rd pregnancy, I couldn’t walk at night because of the pain. I’d crawl to bed, and my husband would help lift me into bed. I used a pregnancy belt, and that helped a little, but not much.

After I had my third baby my low back was in a lot of pain and it wouldn’t go away. I did physical therapy, and it helped a little, but not much. I went to one dr and they did an MRI of my lower back. My low back looked great. I went to a specialist. They diagnosed me with a loose S.I. (sacroiliac) joint. My understanding of S.I. joint pain is that it isn’t directly connected to anything super supportive, so it is hard to fix it once it is loose. The first step to improving pain is core strengthening to stabilize everything else around it, which in turn helps to stabilize the S.I. joint.
I did this, and it helped enough that I was functioning.

Although we thought we were done having kids, I started researching how to make pregnancies for women with hypermobility easier.I wanted to help my sisters if they ever had similar problems. I found 2 things that may seem obvious to some, but was new to me: chiropractic adjustments, and high-quality vitamin and mineral supplements.

Well, fast forward 4 years and we got pregnant with our beautiful bonus baby. I went to the chiropractor regularly. My chiropractor also recommended an S.I. belt. It worked way better than the belly band. I still use it occasionally if I have a flair-up. I took what felt like fistfuls of vitamins and minerals. My 4th pregnancy was significantly easier for me physically than the middle 2.

While I was pregnant I also researched recovering from pregnancy with a loose S.I. joint. Turns out there is a specialty within physical therapy called a pelvic floor specialist. I found a specialist near me and 6 weeks postpartum I started pelvic floor therapy. I personally think that pelvic floor therapy should be part of the standard postpartum recovery protocol. The recovery was so much nicer than any of my other babies even though it was my 4th and I was older.

In therapy, I also learned some things about my body that have changed how I work out my pelvic floor. My pelvic muscles are hypertonic, or tight. Trying to strengthen muscles that are already tight doesn’t work. Before muscles can strengthen they first have to relax and have full range of motion. I spent the first 3 weeks of therapy massaging and stretching muscles out before we slowly started strengthening them. I continually re-learn the lesson that when I start to have S.I. joint pain I need to relax the muscles and then strengthen them.

This story is a long way of saying that when your body is unconventional then conventional and mainstream ideas are not going to work. There is also a journey to learning about taking care of your body. It is ok for it to take time. Just don’t give up.