After having my third baby, R this year, my back was in a ton of pain. It didn’t go back together correctly after the stretching from the relaxin hormone in my body. I tried to have it adjusted by my DO, but after trying three times he said I was too flexible and it was too hard to isolate the one vertebrae. He gave me some stretching ideas and sent me on my way.
I had been having this pain since day 1 postpartum. It had caused sciatic pains shooting down my thighs and when I leaned backward like in the shower to rinse my hair it would be excruciating on just the one spot. After a few weeks of inconsistently trying the exercises, it was a little bit better but still hurt. The sciatic pain was gone but I still had the pain in my back.
At about four months postpartum I decided to consistently start doing my body weight fitness workout, the stretches, and planks from the fitloop workout. It only takes about 10 minutes or less three times a week which works well since I didn’t have a lot of time with a newborn. After three to four weeks the pain was gone except when I would try to see if it still hurt. After a few more weeks the soreness had healed from the rest and it no longer hurt.
I found out that my upper abs had not been engaging (they were squishy postpartum)and it had been putting extra pressure on that vertebrae. I noticed after that three weeks that my upper abs were way harder. Not that I had made gains that soon but it had been tightened. My stomach was flatter and everything was held in better.
This was such a relief to have the pain gone. It had been so frustrating. My husband couldn’t hug me without accidentally putting me in a spot where my back hurt so badly. It had been affecting many aspects of my life including holding my three-year-old A, who is a snuggle monkey.
After this success, I was researching one day and found an article about knee pain too. I will write more about that after I have actually healed that. For now, I am using exercise to try to strengthen my hips and relieve the inflammation and tightness in my knees that are probably from overuse.
Pregnancy is hard on women’s bodies no matter whether it is a perfect pregnancy with perfect weight gain and moderate exercise or if there are more extenuating circumstances. I never gained more than the recommended 25-35 pounds for my weight group. However, I still had troubles with my first and third pregnancies with knee pain.
I have incorporated about a once a week walk into my routine as well, but I don’t want to overdo it before my knees are healed. I would like to get back into running and work up to a 5-10k or so per day once I’m ready.
I lose about half the weight I gain from pregnancy very quickly within the first week or so. It takes until I stop nursing to lose the other half. I don’t mind, I prefer to be slightly heavier but I can’t keep weight on me very easily. This time I would like to try eating keto and working out to shift my weight to higher muscle mass and less fat like I had in high school.
It will take a lot of work but here are the steps that I would like to take in the next six months or so:
- Planks all at 60 sec each.
- Full fitloop workout including handstands
- 15 min on trampoline 3x a week
- 5-6 30 min walks a week with my girls picking up trash
- Eating low carb 50g or so net carbs
With this workout, I will hopefully be more in control of my body and be able to see strength gains and maybe maintain my weight above 120. I know many people want to lose weight and keto is great for that. I’m hoping to test it out for maintenance and mood benefits for bipolar. I am not interested in losing weight on keto. My journey will be more like the reappropriation before and afters where they are the same weight or close to it before and after but they are much stronger. So shifting fat to muscle.
I am so excited to no longer have pain in my back and to hopefully get rid of the pain in my knees. I would love to be able to do an L-sit into a handstand but that is a longer-term goal I’m thinking maybe by the end of 2018.
Balancing my Bipolar 