Back pain due to carrying infant - tips on how to rehab? Back pain template not helping.

Pain & Rehab Forum [Moderated]
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Hi BBM crew,

I am looking for tips on how to manage low-grade but nagging back pain from carrying my newborn infant around for the past 4 months. The pain does not prevent me from working out, but it affects my quality of life because it’s painful throughout the day. I feel the pain most acutely when carrying my child, I think because I jut my stomach out to support her against my arm and it tilts my hip forwards a lot.

I have dealt with other tweaks, injuries, etc. successfully in the past but this one has left me scratching my head because my usual approach has not succeeded.

My standard approach is to find some exercises that feel therapeutic to the area and then slowly introduce weight and volume as tolerated. For example, when my back has previously gotten tweaked, I did very light round-back deadlifts until it felt tolerable, then transitioned to other deadlift variations, which worked very well.

However, this approach has not worked. I have also tried the exercises in the back pain rehab template with no success.

Does anyone have any additional exercises they’d suggest I try that might be therapeutic in this instance? For context, I am strength training an average of 2x/week and have been running a similar program for the past 6 months, so there has not been any sudden increase/decrease in training stress.

The only thing I can think of is that I don’t really train my core directly. That’s probably what I will try next unless there are other suggestions.

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Hi there,

Sorry to hear about this issue. I suspect that your understanding of the approach here may not fully align with how we think about this process. You mention that in the past, you have used “exercises that feel therapeutic to the area and then slowly introduce weight and volume as tolerated”. This is a great approach for many cases, however note the other important feature: “when my back has previously gotten tweaked, I did very light round back deadlifts …” – i.e., you significantly reduced the intensity and volume of loading of the affected area while simultaneously changing the stimulus to a different, novel, and more tolerable movement.

You then mention that you have “tried the exercises in the back pain rehab template with no success”, and you are asking for “any additional exercises that might be therapeutic”.

There is nothing special about the specific exercises being chosen in most of these scenarios. Even with your prior bouts of back pain, we could have easily chosen many other movements than light round-back deadlifts and achieved a successful rehab outcome due to the other variables at play – reductions in intensity, volume, novel movement variations, and time.

Similarly in this situation, I do not think there is any particular exercise that we would recommend or that is “necessary” to your recovery. It is reasonable to continue experimenting with tolerable movement variations, but I suspect there are other variables at play that are contributing to the persistence of your symptoms.

This may include the other activities you are doing in your 2x/week strength training program that may also need modification, it may include the fact that you continually exposed to the provoking factor by picking up your newborn infant (who is also presumably growing and getting heavier), and it may include sleep disruptions and other stressors associated with having a newborn.

So, if the apparent provoking factor it itself not being modified, I am skeptical that adding a specific new exercise, whether to train your “core” or any other, is likely to help.

If I had to make a recommendation here it would involve brainstorming alternative strategies to pick up and hold your newborn, doing your best to get enough sleep (understanding this is not entirely within your control), and looking at the rest of your programming to consider whether other modifications in intensity, volume, or broadening exercise variation are feasible.

Beyond this, given that you have tried using the back pain template without success so far, the next best step would be consultation with a professional – and our pain & rehab team would be happy to help with a formal consult.

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Thanks, I appreciate the thoughtful response!