Pregnancy is both an extremely rewarding and taxing experience for women. After your baby is born, you’re enamored with the new addition to your family and just assume that your body will return to exactly the way it was prior to your pregnancy. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Women often deal with low back, buttock or pelvic pain anywhere from six months to many years postpartum. At The Michigan Center for Regenerative Medicine, we often see patients dealing with chronic pain years after delivery. This pain often occurs on one side of the lower back or pelvis and gets worse when sitting, lifting a child or rolling over while in bed. For a number of these women the SI joint is the source. While this pain may resolve on its own, for some, this is not always the case.
What The SI Joint Is And What Pregnancy Does To It
The SI or sacroiliac joint is located in your pelvis and is what connects your lower spine to your hip bones. You actually have two SI joints – one on each side of your sacrum which is the bone shaped like a triangle at the base of your spine. The SI joint acts as a shock absorber to help transfer the weight of your upper body.
During pregnancy a certain hormone, called relaxin, helps to loosen pelvic ligaments to prepare for birth. While this is necessary to ensure your body is ready for labor, it can also cause SI joint instability. Additionally, weight gain is common and necessary during pregnancy which can also increase the strain on your joints, including the SI joints and also move your center of gravity forward causing pelvic rotation which can further aggravate SI joint pain.
What SI Joint Pain After Pregnancy Feels Like And Why It Often Gets Missed
SI joint pain is often only on one side and will typically increase with sitting. Additionally, patients may experience pain that radiates into the groin, buttocks or down the back of the leg which can often be mistaken as sciatica. One of the struggles with diagnosing SI joint pain is that many times X-rays and MRIs can come back as normal even when the SI joint is the source.
How Our Team Diagnoses Postpartum SI Joint Pain
Any time SI joint pain is suspected, one of our board-certified physicians will complete a physical exam first. We will use a variety of stress tests to try to reproduce your pain by loading the SI joint in different ways. Next, we will often use a diagnostic injection where we’re able through image guidance, inject numbing medication directly into the SI joint. If the pain subsides for a few days then the diagnosis is confirmed. All of our doctors have extensive experience with image-guided injections to ensure the injection location is ideal to target the SI joint.
Treatment Options for Postpartum SI Joint Pain
There are a number of treatment options for postpartum SI joint pain, a few of which we’ll outline below with the most conservative options listed first.
- Conservative care – SI joint pain can first be treated with a number of conservative treatment options such as physical therapy and pelvic floor rehabilitation. No matter what type of treatment option you choose, strengthening the surrounding muscles and ligaments around the SI joint is important for lasting relief.
- Corticosteroid injections – These injections can be used as a bridge to physical therapy or for getting through a particularly hard stretch, but they should not be looked at as a long-term solution.
- Regenerative Orthobiologics – If your pain keeps coming back, we may suggest orthobiologics injected into the ligaments and joint itself. The main cause of SI joint pain after pregnancy is a laxity of the ligaments surrounding the SI joint. Different regenerative orthobiologics procedures such as PRP may help to strengthen and stabilize these ligaments and address the root cause as opposed to just the symptoms of your pain.
Reach Out to The Michigan Center for Regenerative Medicine Today If You’re Struggling with SI Joint Pain After Pregnancy
If you’re struggling with chronic SI joint pain after child birth you deserve relief as opposed to another dismissal. At The Michigan Center for Regenerative Medicine, we have a team of doctors and providers that are focused on helping determine the root cause of your SI joint pain. To schedule your first consultation with one of our providers, call our office today at (248) 216-1008.