do you have leg pain or weird sensations in legs?
pete

the facet joint problem may be the culprit. there are injections that can help. a pain management dr. might be helpful. avoid lifting heavy baby lol. you dont want to aggravate disk. a course of light stretching or some swimming may be beneficial.
there aren't many people on line today because of holiday. you'll probably get more response tomorrow.
i couldn't go to a cookout because i couldn't get up the stairs to the house...so what do i do but go out all by myself in a power wheelchair. i leaned back, chair tipped over and i fell down 10 ft. embankment! i would have been safer at the cookout!!!
keep us posted
pete

Nothing in particular happened to me to cause my back pain either. One day I noticed that fingers/hand on my left would occasionally get numb, but it didn't seem too bad so didn't bother me. I assumed I leaned on it the wrong way and it "fell asleep". But over time it was getting worse involving more of my arm and shooting pains. I finally went to see the doctor when the whole arm went numb while I was in the grocery store. It was as if my arm wasn't there at all! It turned out that I had two herniated discs. (Over time another herniation has developed so that I now have three.)

Anyway, my doctor was surprised to find out that I wasn't in any sort of accident before this. No car wreck, no fall down a flight of stairs, nuthin'! So I've been labeled with degenerative disc disease, they are just getting old and worn on their own. BUT I did raise the question about car wrecks way way back in the past. Between the ages of 16 and 19 I was involved in three minor crashes (I was only driving in one of those, I'm not a bad driver! lol) this was back in the late 70s and early 80s before everyone was gung ho about seatbelts, so in each crash I wasn't wearing one and hit the windshield. I think those crashes may have caused weakness or minor injuries to the discs in my neck that have gotten worse over time and my doctor agrees that this is a possibility.

In your case it sounds like you also don't have a definitive reason for your back problems. It could be something like mine where falls or injuries in the past have weakened the discs and the pregnancy just put too much stress on your back so that something had to give. I'm thinking the exercise more likely helped you hold off for as long as you did, that should have strengthened the muscles and bones, but that after awhile the pregnancy got to be too much for your spine and then the exercise wasn't helping anymore and might have been hurting things.

Anyway, if you do have injuries in the past, even distant past, that didn't cause apparent problems at the time, you might want to discuss them with your doctor anyway as possible causes or contributors to your spinal issues now.

Hi and welcome to Spine-Health.

Your MRI results sound a lot like mine last week. I have two facet joints that are inflamed and swollen and creating some bad back pain. Those swollen joints are pressing on my L4/5 disk which is resulting in a bulging disk pressing on some nerves and I've got some sciatica and pins and needles in my legs.

Although the pain is bad, it's not serious enough for surgery at this point and I'll be getting a facet joint injection and an ESI next month.

I'm not in any way a doctor and obviously can't diagnose a darned thing, but I just wanted to let you know that what I'm dealing with sounds pretty close to what's happening to you.

Do you have an appointment with a spine specialist? I'm very lucky because I have a great spinal team that took care of my cervical spine and they're now helping me with my lumbar spine. I hope you can find someone that can help you with non-invasive therapy and you can get back to being at least relatively pain-free.

Take care and keep us posted on your progress.
Cath