To the Mom Who Keeps Pushing Through the Pain: This One's for You

Jessica Pace
Apr 25
5 min read

Updated: May 10

mom with low back pain at home with young children

This one is for the mom who has been quietly accommodating her low back pain for the past six months. The one who stretches for thirty seconds before bed and calls it self-care. The one who keeps meaning to do something about it as soon as things slow down — and who will probably spend this Mother's Day taking care of everyone else before she takes care of herself.

Things don't slow down. You already know this.

I'm writing this as both a physical therapist and a mom — someone who has sat in that exact place of putting her own body last and telling herself it wasn't that bad. I know what it costs. And I know the math that makes it feel impossible to prioritize yourself when everyone around you needs something.

Mom back pain is one of the most common and most undertreated presentations I see — not because it's complicated, but because life keeps getting in the way of addressing it. But here's what I've learned from years of working with parents who finally made their own care a priority: the cost of waiting is almost always higher than the cost of addressing it. Pain that could have been resolved in six weeks becomes a six-month project. A compensation pattern that started in the hip quietly loads the knee and the lower back until all three are symptomatic. Small problems become complex ones — not because you were negligent, but because life was full and the window to act kept getting pushed.

Why Moms with Back Pain Wait So Long to Get Help

It's not laziness or indifference. It's the relentless math of caregiving.

Your available time, energy, and mental bandwidth are already allocated before you've had your first cup of coffee. Adding a clinic commute, a waiting room, a referral process, and a rigid appointment schedule to that equation doesn't just feel inconvenient — it feels genuinely impossible. So it doesn't happen. And the pain gets accommodated instead of addressed.

I built Pace Tailored Virtual PT specifically because I believe that barrier shouldn't exist. As I've written about in What Is Virtual PT — Really?, care that happens in your home, on your schedule, around nap times and school pickups — that's care people can actually access and actually use. The research supports virtual PT as equivalent to in-person care for the majority of orthopedic conditions. The only thing that changes is the commute. And for a mom with young kids, that's not a small thing.

Mom Back Pain Patterns I See Most in Young Families

There's a cluster of orthopedic presentations that appear consistently in parents of young children — driven not by age or bad luck, but by the specific physical demands of this phase of life.

Low back and SI joint pain is probably the most common. The combination of carrying, lifting, bending, sleep deprivation, and the postural changes that accumulate over pregnancy and the postpartum period creates significant load on the lumbar spine and sacroiliac joints. This is the pain that gets written off as "just part of having kids" — and it's almost always addressable. I will cover the postpartum orthopedic picture in detail in a future blog post if you want a deeper look at what's driving it.

Neck and upper back tension from feeding positions, carrying, looking down at a phone or tablet during middle-of-the-night feeds, and working at improvised home setups accumulates over months into something that no longer resolves with a hot shower. As I outlined in Spring Cleaning Your Posture, the mechanism is adaptive shortening of the anterior structures combined with mid-back weakness — and stretching alone won't fix it.

Hip pain from the asymmetrical loading of carrying a child predominantly on one side, combined with gluteal weakness and residual ligamentous laxity in postpartum women, is another presentation I see regularly. The Hip Pain Causes: What's Actually Going On and Why It's Not Just 'Getting Older' post covers this in detail, but the short version is: it's rarely just one thing, and it responds well to a thorough assessment and a targeted program.

Knee pain on return to exercise is extremely common in moms who spent months with reduced activity and then tried to jump back into running, HIIT classes, or heavier lifting before their supporting structures had caught up. The Knee Pain Running: How to Get Back Outside Without Making It Worse post addresses this directly — the return-to-impact principle applies equally whether you're a competitive runner or a mom trying to get back to her morning workout.

Your Body Is Not the Price You Pay for Parenthood

This is the thing I most want to say clearly: functioning through pain is not a virtue. It's a signal that something needs attention — and the longer that signal goes unanswered, the louder and more complex it tends to get.

I also want to say this, as someone who has navigated the postpartum recovery period myself: the cultural message that mothers should simply push through is doing real damage. It delays care, normalizes pain that isn't normal, and quietly erodes the physical capacity that makes you able to show up fully for the people who need you.

A body that's moving well, not accommodating pain, and functioning at full capacity isn't a luxury. It's what makes everything else sustainable. This Mother's Day, the most useful thing anyone could give you — or that you could give yourself — is finally doing something about it.

What Getting Help for Mom Back Pain Actually Looks Like

A virtual PT evaluation doesn't require a referral, a commute, or a two-month wait. It requires a device, an internet connection, and about an hour for your initial evaluation — which can happen during a nap window, after bedtime, or at whatever time actually exists in your week. As a mom of three myself, I also want to be clear: if your baby is in your lap or your toddler makes a cameo, we keep going. This is a judgment-free space that was built for exactly this season of life.

From there, you get a written clinical summary, a program built around your specific presentation and your actual life, and ongoing access to someone who knows your case. No generic exercise sheets. No rotating roster of providers who don't know your history. No being discharged before the problem is actually fixed.

If you've been putting this off, this is your sign that it's okay to make it a priority. Your kids need you healthy. And so do you.

Ready to Feel Better Without Leaving Home?

This Mother's Day, if you've been managing pain on your own, waiting it out, or telling yourself it's not bad enough yet — there's a smarter path. At Pace Tailored Virtual PT, you get board-certified orthopedic expertise, a program built specifically for you, and care that fits into the reality of your life. No waitlists. No commute. No generic exercise sheets.

👉 Book your initial evaluation at Pace Tailored Virtual PT and take the first step toward actually fixing it.

About the Author

Jessica Pace is a Doctor of Physical Therapy, board-certified orthopedic clinical specialist, and mom of three. She is the founder of Pace Tailored Virtual PT, a concierge virtual orthopedic PT practice, and has over 10 years of experience treating musculoskeletal conditions. She built Pace Tailored Virtual PT for exactly the person this post is written for — someone who knows she needs help and hasn't been able to make it happen yet.