Hip pain and yoga

When you're pregnant, you're supposed to sleep on your side. Specifically the left side, because they the weight of the baby doesn't obstruct the vena cava and your intestines. This isn't really a problem for me because I've always preferred to sleep on my left side. However, I've started getting pains in my hips from sleeping that way.

The pains started probably 6 weeks ago, maybe longer. I started waking up early in the morning because my hip hurt too much to continue laying on it. I could switch temporarily to the other side, but then that side would start to hurt. We bought a memory foam mattress topper (at Costco) and it solved the problem for a while, but it's back again.

Turns out this is a very common problem among pregnant women. The relaxin hormone is produced during pregnancy to relax the joints and ligments in the hips and pelvis so the baby can pop out more easily. However, it starts its work early on in the pregnancy process and leads to hip and thigh pain in some women. Me, for instance.

People online have suggested various pillow configurations (between the knees, between the ankles, behind the back so you can lean slightly backwards, in front of the belly to support the weight of the baby). It sounds like the only solution is pillow trial and error. I may start giving that a try in the next few nights.

My other solution was to try a little yoga. I'd planned on doing prenatal yoga, in fact as Mike would be happy to tell you, I bought three prenatal yoga DVDs from Amazon. However, as Mike would relish telling you even more, I haven't actually opened any of them. I'm using the "I've been busy" excuse. That, combined with the "when I'm not busy, I'm lazy" excuse, means that I hadn't gotten around to yoga.

This morning, my hips were *really* sore. I slept a long time last night (I was exhausted yesterday), which contributed in part. I also took a long walk on Tuesday, so my hips and parts of my thighs were sore Tuesday night and Wednesday. This morning, I decided to bite the bullet and actually break out the yoga DVDs. One of them is only 30 minutes long, so I decided to start with that one and get into this whole process gradually. It was very low intensity, but I feel somewhat better stretched than when I started. My hips and legs are very tight, so I'm sure continuing with the yoga is an excellent idea. We'll see if this does anything to alleviate hip pain tonight.