Holy hips batman!

I've mentioned before this pregnancy has been relatively uneventful - especially as far as aches and pains go. I've had some here and there, but nothing that I would call chronic or severe. The sciatic nerve has been the worst, and thats been intermittent at best.

Last weekend was my first taste of "OH MY GOD I FEEL LIKE I'M BEING TORN TO PIECES" kind of pain. I know I know, I shouldn't complain now - because if I bitch about little stuff now, how the heck am I ever going to handle labor.....but just hear me out.

Let me preface this by saying I probably self inflicted the majority of the pain. I took a long walk home from Wrigley Field on Friday (2.5 miles?) and rode the bike 7 miles on Saturday - then trapsed around in high heels for a while on Saturday night......so I'm sure those things didn't help.

Anyway, since I've been having to sleep on my side, I wake up feeling like I was hit by a truck in the middle of the night. Just all sorts of achy, especially in my hips and shoulders. This weekend though, even the pillow in between my legs didn't help at all. I'm assuming it was just all part of the natural, hip widening process (yes, apparently my hips were not wide enough already)....but, sweet LORD it was painful. It was like someone strapped each side of me up to a medieval torture device, and was just cranking up the machine to pull me a part at the hips. ugh!

One morning I woke up at around 4:30AM and couldn't go back to sleep. Nothing helped - I downed Tylenol like it was going out of style, went into the living room and layed in the recliner and elevated my legs....nothing seemed to help. I finally ended up taking a nap in the bathtub.......I found out (now here's a nice visual) if I flipped over belly down and propped myself up on my elbows and balanced with my feet and knees, I could "float" in the bathtub....and that finally gave me enough relief to sleep for a while longer and make the pain go away. I pretty much stayed at home off my feet on Sunday, and by Monday the pain was tolerable. It seems to be fine now.

The other great thing is that we bought a new mattress, and it is like sleeping on heaven. I felt so rested this morning, and didn't spend half the night flippin' and floppin' around! I hope it keeps me feeling that way! I also had a 60 minute massage today too - so I should sleep very well tonight. And I'll have to remember to not overdo the exercise, so I can avoid that kind of pain again!!!