Why does my back hurt when I carry my baby?

The Parent Performance Back Pain Series — Chapter 1: The Breakdown

My back failed when I became a dad and even as a physio, this had me floored.

It was a back pain so debilitating it had me questioning myself as a physio. But, more importantly it was severely limiting me as a dad.

My Story

It all started way back when our daughter was a few months old, and as some of you might have been lucky enough to experience, she didn't love sleeping. So I would spend hours walking her around in our bedroom to get her to and keep her asleep. Meaning I got little sleep and a lot of stress! But, as us parents know it's all part of the job and the show must go on.

I was during this same time though, that I was still training like a lunatic, pushing for a maximum deadlift, that in hind-sight meant absolutely nothing in the grand scheme. Then one fine Saturday morning, I just finished a particularly heavy set of lifts and felt that lovely subtle tweak in my lower back. I thought it would fade away, but it was not to be! Within 15 minutes I was walking around like a like a toddler with a full nappy.

Within a day I could barely lean forward, which made things like picking up my daughter absolute agony. Trying to walk my baby daughter around was painful with every step, and as we all know us parents need to do a lot of this in the early stages! Every morning was the same struggle, waddling out of bed and blasting myself with the hot water of the shower, which gave me some sort of mobility back. Luckily, as a physio none of this was too shocking to me.

However, as is the way with parent-life, I put myself on the back-burner, I did none of the rehab and mobility exercises and instead just stopped training (the exact opposite of what I'd get a patient to do). This cocktail of a loss of strength, sleep-deprivation and high-levels of stress meant my back pain would thrive for months!

This was a good experience though, and no I'm not a sadist! Going through this injury completely changed the way I practiced as a physio.

The Real Problem

As horrible and debilitating the pain was, that wasn't what hurt the most.

It was the inability to be the best version of dad for my daughter and the best version of husband for my wife. Every movement was agony, so helping change nappies, getting my daughter to sleep, getting her out of her cot, playing on the floor, all of these things that are such special moments were breaking me.

This is what hit the hardest - that feeling of being useless.

You soon realise how important your health and mobility is when you lose it.

Being a parent is tricky enough, whether it's in the newborn phases, toddler years or even of teenagers - you need your body to be firing on all cylinders. So when you are struggling with back pain instead all these moments that are meant to be special, are tainted with pain instead.

But, I was lucky - being a physio I knew the right things to do, I just wasn't doing it properly.

But, for most people pain and injury can be bloody confusing.

Who do you see?

Should I push through this pain?

What's the right type of treatment?

How long should this last?

All of these uncertainties make the experience of pain ten times worse. Not all injuries are 100% preventable, but looking back on my experience the warning signs were there - these were the main three:

Injuries are Complex........

Listen To Your Body - The Cause of Injuries are Never Just Physical.

I was redlining - I was sleep deprived, stressed to the gills and pushing too hard when I trained.

The human body is a complex machine made up of a lot of moving parts so whenever we get an injury, we have to consider everything.

Now, it's natural to jump towards what have I done wrong physically and that's obviously the cause of most injuries or at least when we notice it, like in my case it was during dead lifting. But this doesn't mean that dead lifting is wrong, it was just the activity where my back decided to say no more.

Any time we look at the cause of an injury, especially if it's a repeat injury or an injury that is not resolving we need to look at multiple factors. The obvious ones are mental and emotional states so if we are going through periods of increased stress, it can increase the risk of injury and also increase the amount of pain that we feel. The same goes for lack of sleep.

If we are deprived of sleep our body is not restoring and repairing as well therefore it increases the chance of injury. These are two of the big ones but there are multiple factors so when I look at my situation, I was putting together all the things you want if you try to get back pain. But the good news with this is because there's multiple causes behind pain there's also multiple solutions behind rehabilitation.

Don't Do the All or Nothing Approach - Instead Just Know That Something is Better Than Nothing.

Similar to the first point, but with a different twist. My issue was that I was pushing way too hard and not recovering well, but also I wasn't training consistently. So my body was not properly adapting to training, and not developing resilience. Instead it was like constantly stretching a rubber band to it's end point and letting it snap-back.

If I look back on when I injured myself, there are a few things that I would do differently. I know that I shouldn't have been pushing myself as hard as I was in the gym, but my issue was because I wasn't training as frequently. I would try to train harder when I did, which sounds fine until you hurt yourself and as a physio I should've known better!

But the approach I take now is: something is better than nothing. Just because you can't do an hour of extreme exercise, doesn't mean you don't move at all. And when you do get time to exercise, don't try to fit 3 weeks worth into 30 minutes.

Consistency over time, beats intensity every time.

Pain does not equal damage, pain equals protection.

This is a key in acknowledging when to push and when to rest.

Pain is our brains way of protecting our body, so we don't do silly things and hurt ourselves. It's always tricky to tell what pain to listen to and what pain to ignore.

But, when you are feeling strung out, tight and tired, it's usually a good sign that it's time to wind it back and live to fight another day.

In the early stages of an injury we do want to listen to pain as it allows us to recover. However, as we move further away from the initial injury, it is important that we get moving, so we don't get too weak. This is when we can listen a little bit less to our pain.

It's what can make the difference between weeks of pain and months to years of pain.

How To Manage Back Pain - Especially As a Parent.

Step 1 - Sounds obvious, but stay calm. Back pain is always scary, but as hard as it can be, we need to stay calm and composed. We need to keep on being mum and dad, so we don't want to be overwhelmed by pain. So more often then not, it's business as usual - we have no other choice sometimes!

But, do it knowing full well, that you're not creating more damage.

Step 2 — Manage symptoms and maintain movement. Like the last point finished with, it's important that we maintain movement as best as possible. This helps keep things moving and grooving, and you often feel better for doing so. As far as pain relief techniques are concerned, ice or heat (neither is better), mobility and gentle movement.

Step 3 — Strengthen and Rebuild - This is where physio comes into play. Our job is to get things loaded and prevent weakening as much as possible in the early stages of back pain. Then we continue to load and strengthen over the weeks and months.

Step 4 — Bulletproof Finally, we want to stop this from happening again. This is where a lot of people fall off, which is normal because our pain is gone and we're back to business as usual. But, and this is a big but! As parents it's vital that we become stronger than ever, you need it, but you're kids need it more. You want to be able to keep up with them for as long as possible!!

So that's the story of how I cooked my back and what I should've done differently!

But, the most important learning from this was not only how vital it is to stay as physically strong as possible as a dad. Additionally, it changed the way I perceive rehabilitation and deliver that for parents, time is little and stress is high. So, things can take longer to get back to normal, but the goal of being a stronger parent is the best driver!

Thanks,

James Brown — Physiotherapist, Dad & Founder of Feel Good Physio Co.

F.A.Q.S

1. What does my back hurt so much as a parent?

Back pain and parenting are a match made in heaven, in fact it would almost be weirder if you never got back pain as a parent. The main reason back pain is so common in mums and dads comes down to the physical demands of parenthood. Picking kids up, carrying them everywhere, falling asleep in chairs! There's a lot of physical stress put on our bodies. On top of this though, pain is also dialled up by factors like sleep deprivation and stress. Which all makes for a perfect recipe for pain.

2. What should I do if hurt my back?

Stay calm and keep mobile! The initial stages of a back injury are always painful, so we want to respect that and therefore dial things back a tad. But, this is easier said than done as a parent. You CAN still move though! - The good news is that pain is not a sign that you're causing damage, so you can push through it but we just don't want to cause extra stress and pain if we can avoid it!

For the first few days it's all about calming symptoms down and maintaining a level of mobility.

As your pain begins to reduce then we increase movement.

Then in the final stages it's always important to focus on strength and rehabilitation, to stop this from coming back!

However, it's always best to seek the advice of a good physio for any back injury! Our job is to get you pain free and stronger than ever!