Lower back pain in late pregnancy

[HerculesMulligan]

I'm having an extended hospital stay at 34/35 weeks (currently on day 13) and the bed is absolutely crippling me. I have pain across my lower back which DH can massage back to being a single knot but which is otherwise a band across my back that spreads until my bump is sore and taut.

I don't know yet when I can go home (possibly not for a while) and it's making me miserable. IV paracetamol helps a bit, but the maximum dosage leaves me unmedicated and climbing the walls for chunks of the day. They've tried me on codeine and various other opiates to fill in the gaps, it's made no difference.

I'm more mobile now so spending as much time as I can walking around the unit, but my energy levels are low and worse because the back pain is stopping me from sleeping.

I'm at my wits' end.

Heat pads helped me a lot. And I lived in the bath. And got a fancy memory foam topper for the bed.

Take bath's ask for a birthing ball to sit on in the day, get DH to bring in a pregnancy pillow xx

Oh yes a yoga ball. That saved me. And I spent most of the birth on it too!

I am so grateful to you for being awake! My lovely nurse has just brought me more paracetamol, two hot water bottles and a codeine tablet so I'm attacking it from all sides. So far tonight I've managed about 3.5 hrs of sleep and about the same of pacing the corridors.

(There are labouring women pacing with their husbands or birth partners and looking at me in sympathy for pacing solo - tempting to phone DH and get him over here to (literally) share my pain.)

Oh bless you. Chocolate helped me too.