Maternity Clinic: Sciatic Nerve Pain and Lower Back Pain
As the centre of gravity changes in your body during pregnancy, mechanical stress is imposed on the lower back.
Typical symptoms: Mild to very acute buttock pain and/or thigh, knee, calf muscle and foot pain. Pain is apparent as a constant dull ache and/or tingling in the leg.
Sciatic Nerve Impingement occurs at the bottom three vertebra of the lower back because the nerves that come out of the spinal chord at these levels coalesce to from the sciatic nerve. These vertebrae are in close proximity to the pelvis.
As the centre of gravity changes in your body during pregnancy mechanical stress is imposed on the lower back. This is clearly because of your changing posture and also the resulting anatomical adaptations as the body prepares itself for delivery (and as the baby engages in the pelvis for delivery).
For various reasons these processes can cause the sciatic nerve to become trapped (or impinged) causing pain in the lower back and down the back of your leg.
This pain pattern pathway typically follows the structures that the nerve itself innervates as it travels down the back of your leg before eventually terminating into your foot. It provides both feeling and motor power to the muscles in the buttock, at the back of the upper and lower leg and foot. Pain is therefore typically transferred to these areas when the nerve is trapped at spinal level.
Depending on which trimester you are in, our treatments can be carefully adapted and gently administered to suit you. Typically if you are over thirty weeks for example we will adapt your position during treatment so that we avoid lying you on your tummy.
Things to be aware of that are clinically significant:
More severe impingement can cause foot drop in the ankle or weakness when pushing off with your foot when walking
Progressive leg weakness
In extreme cases loss of bowel or bladder control indicates a medical emergency and tingling/ numbness in groin area.
Our IDD Therapy programme can help treat trapped nerves, is non-invasive (unlike surgery) and is also pain-free. IDD Therapy bridges the gap between what manual therapy cannot achieve and surgery. This therapy is the fastest growing therapy for trapped nerves and degenerative disc issues in the UK.