Your Voodoo Sounds Good to Me

Let's start off with a disclaimer: I admit that I'm a huge snob about alternative medicine. I have never been to a chiropractor and if you tell me that ground up dried seahorse is better than Viagra, I will laugh in your face. I don't take a ton of supplements (beyond prenatals of course) and I have never in my life thought "You know, I just really think I need to cleanse my system of toxins".

Despite all of this, I ended up sitting in an appointment with a physical therapist last Friday who practices osteopathic treatments and completely agreeing to try whatever voodoo she suggested. After over 2 weeks of pain, I would have dressed like a clown and done the Hokey Pokey if she said it would make the pain go away.

The appointment started out with an overall assessment of my pain levels and range of motion. It turns out that having someone poke around until they find EXACTLY where it hurts can be painful enough to make you drip sweat in a 65 degree room. That's basically a workout right?

Two things of note:

1. I have not one, but two dislocated ribs on my right side. One is a floating rib toward the bottom and the other is up higher, basically at the bra line.

2. My shoulder blade pain and right arm weakness/pain was actually a separate issue. A few days after the initial rib injury I was trying to pick up Faith to put her in bed and she was fighting me (overtired toddlers are basically terrorists) and felt a sharp pain in my shoulder blade. I thought it was just rib-related, but it turns out I had actually pinched a nerve in my neck. I have no idea why I am so breakable lately.

I told you to stop sleeping like this

The good news is that the neck thing seems to be easily fixable. She fiddled with it and showed me some exercises and I already have a HUGE reduction in arm pain. Hilariously (well, kinda) I hadn't even noticed I was having weakness on the whole right side of my body until she was testing everything but now that I've been doing the exercises, I feel so much better. Turns out moving around is a lot easier when your right leg is fully on board with the program.

You aren't very smart, are you?

After she was done with my neck, she wanted to address the rib issue. It made me somewhat uneasy that she had to go find a large reference book and look up how to fix it, but it should make everyone reading this feel better...since this means it's pretty rare and won't happen to you. I told her that my doctor suggested that trying to "rehome" the ribs while I'm still pregnant probably wouldn't be successful, but she thought she could do it if she used her fancy osteopathic methods. Plus, the longer the ribs stay out of place, the harder it will be to get them back in alignment since the surrounding muscles will lengthen/tighten around their new position, so I agreed to try to put them back now.

Side note: You know shit is about to get real in a PT appointment when they apologize in advance for how much pain you'll be in later.

The actual adjustment part was uncomfortable, but not crazy painful, but she was right about how I felt after the appointment. She sent me home with instructions to rest for 24 hours and not lift or reach for anything. Sure, just tell that to my little friend.

You just rest Mommy, I won't get into ANY trouble. Promise.

Luckily my husband was home so I was able to just sit with ice and rest. On Saturday morning, I woke up and felt AWESOME. I could breathe without sharp pain and finally move my right arm painlessly, even above my head. Since I felt so great, I decided to do ALL THE THINGS I'd been wanting to do for the past two weeks. I cooked, I cleaned, I took the stroller for a short run and then ran more on the treadmill, and then I started baking.

Nothing says "I feel good" like homemade cinnamon rolls

You're a better Mommy when you're not all bitchy and moany

Not shockingly, by Saturday night the pain was back. The pain seemed to be more isolated to the area of the lower rib, so I'm thinking the lower one moved back out of alignment. By Sunday morning, I was in a substantial amount of pain and wasn't even able to run (so I walked 5 miles on an incline because I am a stubborn idiot). That brought my weekly mileage to 31 miles, which I thought was fun since that means I ran/walked 31 miles when I was 31 weeks pregnant. It's the little things that amuse me.

The PT said she wasn't sure she'd be able to get my ribs "right" on the first try so she had me make another appointment for Friday so she could give it another go. My plan is to be less stupid this time (like, actually rest for longer than 24 hours and then ease back into things) and hopefully have more long term success.

Until then, I'm just making better friends with pain. I took myself off the narcotic painkiller because it just wasn't working as well anymore. I'm hoping a few days off will let my body forget and then I can feel more relief when I do actually take it. The saddest part about painkillers (other than running out) is knowing that it will never work as well as it did that first time you took it.

In non-rib related news, my husband spent a ton of time this weekend redoing Faith's room and she now has the pink pony room of her dreams. I love how other pregnant women "nest" by painting and my only contribution here was putting up the wall decals after everything was done.

The furniture is new too

Every toddler needs a Bose iPod player, right?

So much pink

The curtain valence looks funny because it's not long enough (we needed two, but Target only had one and I had to order a second), but that will be fixed soon. Now all of Faith's old things are ready for the baby. Second children really get shafted. We'll make it up to her when she's old enough to ditch the crib and she can pick out her own room decor, just like Faith did with the pink ponies.

Faith's reaction when she saw her room for the first time after it was painted? "Soooo pretty!"

I will love this room forever and ever

What color was your room when you were a kid? At one point mine was pink, but eventually I was too cool for pink and had yellow instead.