My Daughter Drank My Bones

For the past few months I’ve been dealing with a postpartum medical mystery. It’s been infuriating and debilitating and, at times, terrifying, but we’re finally getting a handle on it. Today, I was in good enough shape to write about it, so buckle up for a story.

Back in July I had a baby. Her name is Lyra, and she is wonderful in every way, but to say the postpartum period has been challenging would be a massive understatement. When we talk about how some people have an easier time parenting than others, a lot of variables get discussed — the family’s financial situation, the health and temperament of the baby, the amount of parental leave everyone gets, and the support of the new parents’ communities being among the big ones. In all these regards, our family has been extremely lucky, but one variable that doesn’t get discussed nearly enough about the postpartum period is the birthing parent’s physical recovery. And over the past six months our family has learned how vital that piece is.

To begin, some background. Going into my pregnancy I was extremely active. I ran, I did yoga, I lifted weights, I rode my Peloton bike. I hiked with my dog, I walked pretty much everywhere I could, and I continued something close to this level of physical fitness throughout my pregnancy (within reason, of course). I ate as healthily as I could, barring the weeks where I was so nauseous I could hardly keep food down, and my weight gain right up until the end was exactly the average for a pregnant person of my height. I had no complications with my pregnancy, barring a period of breech presentation which was resolved at week 37 with an ECV, and to top it off, my vaginal delivery was as straightforward as those things can be, even if it lasted longer than I would have liked. We had no issues with breastfeeding, almost no issues with sleep, and, not to brag, but I also had barely any tearing to contend with either. I thought if anyone was set up for a simple postpartum recovery it would be me.

Lol.

About 10 weeks postpartum I started to develop lower back pain. Now, any birthing parent will tell you that postpartum back pain is par for the course. Pregnancy does a number on your body, stretching your ligaments and rearranging your organs to make space for a new human inside of you. Your bones shift during pregnancy, your silhouette becomes unrecognizable in the mirror. Subtle things change during pregnancy too; your heart beats faster, pumping almost 50% more blood through your veins than it usually does, your hormones change which can lead to loss of sleep, changes in hair growth, and even altered body odor. Some muscles shut off in pregnancies, others start working overtime, and by the time you’re 40 weeks pregnant, you cannot wait for the pain of labor, or the surgical anxiety of a C-section, because you’re just *that* uncomfortable.

And once the baby is born, your body is taxed anew. Babies can be heavy, and cribs aren’t designed with parent ergonomics in mind. Plus, all those changes that happened to your body over the past nine months don’t exactly disappear overnight, and bouncing a baby to sleep a hundred times a day when your core is shot from being stretched out for nine months is hard!

Every new mom I knew was in some sort of pain. Neck issues from baby-wearing, wrist issues from bad nursing positions, rib pain or tailbone pain from a traumatic birth. Not to mention the bladder prolapse, diastis recti, and the burning sensation when you pee that lasts much longer than feels normal, even when your doctor assures you otherwise.

I figured back pain, schmack schmain. What did it matter if my back hurt? Otherwise I was doing fine. Great, even, considering that I had just made another human! I was going to power through any lower back discomfort like the Super Mom I was.

And power through, I did. I made an appointment with a physical therapist who taught me to squat when I lifted instead of bending at my waist. We practiced some kegels, I learned to activate my core, and had my husband do more of the heavy lifting around the house. Everything was going to be fine.

But the back pain didn’t get better. In fact, it got worse. The back pain was turning into back spasms, and soon I had to rest my hands on my legs or a table whenever I bent over, even a few inches. Taking care of a baby was becoming increasingly difficult, and by week 12, when my husband officially went back to work, my techniques for how to safely lift a baby were no longer doing the trick.

We tried to coordinate our days so my husband would be able to lift Lyra up out of the crib between his meetings (he works from home) and during my shifts I would try to keep her in one place and only move her during emergencies. This worked for a day, maybe two, but any new parent will tell you that being able to lift a baby is kind of part of the job description. Babies need to have their diapers changed, and they need to be cuddled, fed, and burped. You try to teach them to put themselves to sleep, but they still prefer falling asleep in your arms as opposed to the expensive crib you so lovingly researched when you were 4 months pregnant, and once a baby is sleeping on you no way are you going to risk waking them up to do something so frivolous as to make yourself more comfortable.

I remember, when the back pain started it was around the same time that we were trying to get Lyra to fall asleep independently. I would put her in the crib and silently plead with her not to cry, because if she cried then I’d have to pick her up, and I couldn’t take the pain anymore. Why was this so hard for me, I wondered? Why was every other parent I spoke to able to handle their discomfort but I wasn’t? I thought I was stronger than this.

We figured all I needed was some rest. My parents were coming into town soon so if my husband could move around some meetings, and if I could muscle through a few more days, we’d have backup and then I could recover the way I needed to. And as soon as my parents arrived my back did start to feel better. They did all the lifting for ten straight days and by the time they left I felt mostly back to my old self.

But it didn’t last. A few days after they went home, around 14–15 weeks postpartum, I woke up, walked to the bathroom to pee, but I must have sat down too hard onto the toilet because upon impact my lower back shuddered. It felt like my spine was snapping in half and an electric current was running through my center. It was the most painful thing I’d ever experienced up until that point, and I’d just given birth. Then, just as soon as it came on, it stopped, and I was left with was an achiness in my lower back muscles and this dizzying nausea that made me think I was going to pass out. I crawled off the toilet and laid down on the floor until the spell passed and when my husband woke up I told him I needed to go to the emergency room.

But that was a trial in and of itself because we had a barely 3-month-old baby we were just learning to keep alive, and ERs are breeding grounds for germs, and who could guess how long I was going to have to be there. So we ended up calling our neighbor, who generously shuttled me over to the ER in his car while my husband stayed with the baby. I had another shuddering spasm putting my shoes on before I left the house, and a third getting into the car, but it was all going to be ok because as soon as I got to the hospital they’d be able to tell me what was wrong.

Lol.

When I told them I had been having absolutely debilitating lower back spasms they looked at me like I told them I was there for a hangnail. There wasn’t anything they could do for back spasms, they told me, except give me some muscle relaxers and some NSAIDs. Finally, one doctor said she could give me Lidocaine injections, which did help relieve the some of the muscle-twitching pain, but that didn’t stop me from feeling like my back had forgotten how to hold me upright, and like my legs had forgotten how to stand.

Walking out of the hospital felt like climbing up a pile of loose stones. Every footstep had to be planned, and at any moment it seemed the ground might slip out from under me. I had to hold onto the counter with one hand when I brushed my teeth that night. I had to clench my abs when I poured a glass of milk. And if I laughed or coughed or — god forbid — sneezed without bracing myself first, I was racked with excruciating pain. I could hardly shower on my own, much less take care of a baby, so we called in reinforcements. My sister (@LindsayLucido! She’s a comedian! Follow her on all the socials!) agreed to fly across the country the very next day so she could help us out while I recovered. She had spent years working as a nanny, and was in between jobs, so she was the perfect person to help us out. We figured she’d stick around through Thanksgiving, and then my parents would come in a little early for Christmas, and by the end of the year there was no way I wouldn’t be back on my feet.

Once again: lol.

With the full-time support I was finally able to rest, and, more importantly, I could make doctor’s appointments. My PCP ordered an X-ray, which we had to get before insurance would approve an MRI, and lo and behold, there on the images were two “minimal/mild” acute or subacute vertebral fractures at L2 and L3. Where had they come from? We had no clue. Possibly labor? Had I had a fall I wasn’t aware of? No idea. But wasn’t it terrifying that I had two vertebral fractures without a specific cause?

To me, yes. Obviously. But my doctors? They didn’t seem too concerned.

Now, to back up momentarily, this wasn’t the first time I’d had a vertebral fracture. In the summer of 2021 I slipped on the stairs, fell, and sustained a compression fracture in my T12 vertebrae. I was in the hospital for just about 24 hours with that injury where I was given an IV drip of morphine and a back brace. 8–12 weeks later I was fully healed and it was almost as if the injury had never happened. I had no lingering pain and I think I actually ran a half marathon later that year, just to show my spine who was boss. I was ready to move on with my life.

But my parents were disturbed by the fact that I’d had a vertebral fracture at all. Osteoporosis runs in our family, they told me, and I should use this fracture as an opportunity to get a DEXA (bone density) scan. If my bone density was low then maybe there were treatments I could do to prevent this sort of thing from happening again.

The doctors, however, were less than amused by my request for a DEXA. No WAY could I have osteoporosis at age 30, they told me. That was absolutely impossible. But, after much fighting, they finally indulged me, and what do you know, I had osteoporosis in — you guessed it — my spine.

We arranged an appointment with an endocrinologist, but that meeting was largely uneventful. After all, there’s no treatment approved for premenopausal women who just so happen to have low bone density in their spines (because what are the odds of THAT happening, amirite???), and furthermore, my husband and I were trying to have a baby. The treatments were long-term and certainly not pregnancy safe, so there wasn’t much they could do for me anyway. Plus, my back had healed without any issues. I was totally fine, and so I was advised to keep an eye on my calcium and vitamin D intake, stay away from high-risk activities, and come back in a few years, once I was done having kids.

But there was one more piece of advice I was given during this meeting. It was a piece of advice that was given offhand, as if recommending a particular restaurant if I wanted good chicken piccata. But I’m eternally grateful that I was given this advice when I was, because it would be the thing that ultimately helped unlock my increasingly debilitating postpartum medical mystery.

The advice was this: Given my spinal bone density, I should consider keeping my breastfeeding period short, maybe only 6 months or so, as breastfeeding can have an osteoporotic effect on bones.

I tucked this piece of advice away for future reference, and then I set out to try to get pregnant.

Fast forward to November of 2023, when I was breastfeeding my then nearly four-month-old baby and I remembered what this doctor had told me. Breastfeeding can have an osteoporotic effect on bones. I set out to try to confirm this fact, asking my PCP, my new physical medicine doctor, and every lactation consultant I could find. But no one knew anything about osteoporosis and breastfeeding. I even made an appointment with a second endocrinologist (the only one I could get in to see before May of 2024…) and she hadn’t heard of this either. My spine was already at risk of fracture, she told me, due to the existing low bone density and the T12 injury. She said she wouldn’t want to deprive me and my baby of breastfeeding, so I should just be careful, avoid falls, and stay away from any contact sports.

But I was already being careful! I was barely even leaving the couch! And the back pain was just getting worse and worse. Soon, I could barely sit at the dinner table without extreme discomfort, and every bump on a car ride made me feel like my insides were crunching together. I was popping ibuprofen and acetaminophen at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and I was on my second refill of the muscle relaxers I’d been prescribed in October. I needed to change positions 6+ times during the course of a normal night’s sleep, since every hour or two I’d wake up stiff and sore and feeling like I’d slept on a wooden plank instead of my schmancy mattress.

One day in early December I woke up feeling pretty darn good. I spent the day walking around our neighborhood without any issues, I changed a few diapers, I helped make dinner, and I thought maybe things were about to turn around for us. I even floated the idea of a date night for me and my husband a few weeks out.

But the next morning, as I was brushing my teeth, something didn’t feel right. There was a weird ache in my glute, and the more I tried to stretch it out, the more I could sense an instability in my lower back. It felt like my spine was made up of two sharp pencils, balancing on top of each other, point to point. Like if I made even the slightest wrong move, they would slip off of each other and I’d break.

So I was careful. I was very careful. I figured that if I could get myself downstairs without incident then I’d be able to take my medicine (which had to be taken with food) and lie on the couch until this feeling of instability went away. All I had to do was make it there.

Carefully, I walked downstairs. Carefully, I entered the kitchen. Carefully, I opened the refrigerator door, pulled out the milk, moved to set it on the countertop…

But I couldn’t quite reach. The milk only made it onto the counter three-fourths of the way and when I let it go I could tell it was about to slide off. And even though I knew better than to lunge for it, even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to catch it, even though I knew that any quick movements would cause the pencil-tip balance of my spine to tumble out of alignment, my body acted without my brain’s consent.

I twitched towards the milk jug, nudging it back on the countertop, and that was all it took.

The pain started in my left glute but it only stayed there for a fraction of a millisecond. Like dominoes knocking each into the other, my muscles lit up one by one. My left hip, and then my left obliques, my left lat crossing the midline of my spine and into my right lat, and before I knew it, my entire lower back was on fire.

I screamed out and my husband and sister came running. I dropped onto the floor mere inches in front of my barely four-month-old daughter, and I curled my body into a fetal position. I shouted at them to call an ambulance.

The spasms wracked my body for minutes, one wave lessening just long enough to let me catch my breath before another came on. I held onto our kitchen cabinets for stability, even though I was already on the ground, and tried to move as little as possible. My body was convulsing, shivering like I was cold, which only made the spasms worse. I tried to keep my breathing deep, my muscles relaxed, because every time I clenched up, it only made the pain more severe. But the shivering was out of my control. I couldn’t stop it no matter how hard I tried.

The ambulance arrived at our house and they loaded me onto a stretcher. They asked me my name, my address, my age, what I’d been doing when the spasm hit, and then they asked me all those questions a second time. They carried me on the stretcher down our front steps and I screamed, the smallest hitches in their steps rattling my bones like I was in a car driving through giant potholes. They gave me Toradol, asked me how I felt about fentanyl (I was still breastfeeding, so, not great), and then asked me if I had ever considered that maybe I had sciatica. Slowly, slowly, the pain began to lessen, but if I moved even the slightest bit, it came surging right back.

At the ER, the doctor didn’t know what to do with me. I told him that the last time I was there I was given Valium and lidocaine injections, so they did that again, and that helped a bit. I told the doctor about my L2/L3 fractures, about how unstable I felt, about how my sister had been living with us for the past three weeks because I couldn’t care for my daughter, but the doctor was unimpressed.

In fact, the doctor seemed unimpressed by my whole situation. I asked for a back brace, he said he couldn’t get me one. I asked if he could run another X-ray, he said I hadn’t had a fall so there was no reason to. I said I needed to pee but couldn’t get up, so he had a nurse give me a bedpan. By noon, he was trying (unsubtly, I might add) to coerce me into leaving. My options, he told me, were to walk out of the ER by myself or, if I really couldn’t walk, I could go into assisted living.

I couldn’t do assisted living, I told him. I had a four-month-old at home. I was breastfeeding her. But that didn’t change the fact that I couldn’t walk.

He shrugged at me and told me I better figure it out.

I asked for a walker, he said that would be impossible. He offered me a cane and I told him that wouldn’t be enough. He offered me two canes.

He couldn’t understand why I couldn’t walk out. “You walked in!” he said.

I reminded him that I’d been carried in on a stretcher.

I asked how long I could stay in the ER. He told me his shift ended at two and he couldn’t leave until I left.

I asked him if he could admit me to the hospital, and he said, “I know back spasms can be uncomfortable” (I scoffed) “but they aren’t life-threatening.” There was nothing he could do.

Finally, someone smuggled me a walker from the storeroom, and with that, and a second helping of Toradol and Valium, I was able to hobble out of the hospital.

In the car on the way home, I couldn’t sit upright without bracing myself with my hands on my knees. When I tried to get up from the car’s front seat, I had to pull myself using anything I could get my hands on — the handle above the car door, my seatbelt, my husband’s arm. I breastfed Lyra while lying on the bed beside her. I didn’t trust myself on the stairs, so I spent that whole first week sleeping on the sofa bed in our front room. I built up a solid four-day-old stink before I even attempted a sponge-shower, and even though I was sitting the whole time, and even though my husband was helping me keep the removable shower head aimed at my body, and even though I was still bracing my hands on my knees to support my weight, I could still feel that pencil-tip balance grow increasingly tenuous. Every time I’d hold the shower nozzle too high, every time I’d twist too far to reach the soap, every time my hands would lose their precarious balance on my slippery knees, I’d feel that shuddery, electric current in my spine and I’d scream out.

I left the shower feeling like I’d barely survived the ordeal and I decided I was going to do baths for the foreseeable future.

My sister had to go back home for a week, so my parents flew out to replace her in taking care of Lyra while I recovered, and with two people helping out instead of one, we threw ourselves into trying to find a solution for this ever-growing problem. At this point I was entirely useless around the house, every bit as needy as the four-and-a-half-month old I was supposed to be taking care of. We had no choice but to beat this.

I spent a week on the phone with doctors trying to get someone to advise me on what to do next. But my physical medicine doctor was impossible to reach, and it was the holidays, and I wouldn’t be able to see him for at least a month. I wasn’t sure where else to go. What do you do in an emergency when the emergency room refuses to treat you?

I sought advice everywhere I could — friends, family, the internet. Our working theory at the time was that I had sustained my fractures during labor, possibly due to my osteoporosis, and my muscles were working well above their usual capacity trying to compensate for the new instabilities. That’s why they were spasming out of control. The solution, we figured, was to find treatments that relieved existing pain while also building up the other muscles so they could support my weight.

I booked the earliest appointment I could find with a physical therapist and then called back every day to see if there were any cancellations. I reached out to my old acupuncturist and booked the first appointment with her that I could. I talked to a friend about osteopathic manipulation and gave that a try. I even found a myofascial release massage therapist and paid him $200 to tell me that my body was “vibrating” because it was in distress. I bought so many foot pillows and knee pillows and neck pillows and back pillows that I completely lost count of how many I had ordered. People recommended books, podcasts, chiropractors. Someone swore by a specific workout regimen and another told me to eat a lot of tomatoes and leafy greens because they help fight inflammation.

Some of these things helped, some did not, and some I didn’t even try. But there was one other thing we did during this time period that ended up being the best thing we could have possibly done for my recovery, and it was all because of that one throwaway piece of advice that the doctor had given us back in 2021.

We began to wean Lyra.

I still hadn’t managed to find anyone else who could verify what that endocrinologist had told me, about breastfeeding having an osteoporotic effect on bones, but I figured if there was even a tiny chance that weaning would help fix whatever was happening inside me, it was worth it. Because at the very least my body was siphoning off its own nutrition to make food for someone else, and on top of that I was contorting myself into all sorts of odd shapes to feed a squirming baby without aggravating my back. It certainly wasn’t going to hurt to wean, and if it actually helped, then that would be amazing.

Slowly, slowly, I started to get better. I was religious about my physical therapy exercises, I was going to acupuncture twice a week, and I was constantly on the phone with my doctors’ offices trying to get earlier appointments for whatever lab work and injections I thought might be helpful. And it seemed to be working because, even though I hadn’t walked unassisted since the ER visit at the start of the December, it also had been just as long since I’d had a spasm. Clearly something we were doing was working.

My parents went back home and my sister tapped back in as full-time caregiver. She was going to be with us until our nanny started working in February. We felt like we had a plan and we could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

But then, just a few days before new year’s, I was stretching in my sleep and I felt something pop in my low back, almost near my tailbone. I was mostly asleep at the time and didn’t think anything of it, but as I woke up the next morning and started to get ready, I knew with increasing certainty that something bad had happened.

I told my husband that maybe we should go back to the ER, but when he asked me what, exactly, was wrong, I couldn’t explain it. Because it wasn’t that anything hurt, at least no more than it usually did. It was just that that pencil-tip balancing feeling was back, and I could tell that if I wasn’t extremely careful with my movements, it would hurt.

What if I fractured something else, I asked him, by moving weirdly in my sleep? Was that even possible? It seemed unlikely, at the very least. But at the same time, I was also absolutely certain that it was true.

My physical therapist, however, was not so convinced. I was just so used to pain, he told me, that I was expecting it. But my body was healing. I was walking better every day!

I knew that, at least in part, he was right. I was walking better every day. But at the same time, that familiar pain was back. The shivering electric feeling, except this time it was lower down in my spine than it had been before. And — was I imagining it? Or was I also starting to feel some spasms in my upper back as well?

By the time I had my next appointment with the physical medicine doctor, I was absolutely certain something was extremely wrong with me. Everything hurt — my hips, my low back, my upper back, my shoulders. I couldn’t put my pants on by myself anymore. I had to lie back on a pillow to put on my shirt.

Something was really wrong, I told him, near tears. I kept getting worse and worse. I still couldn’t walk, I was in incredible pain, and I didn’t feel safe leaving the house anymore. I thought maybe it was related to my osteoporosis, but I couldn’t get in to see an endocrinologist who specializes in it for months. Were there any strings he could pull to try to get me in faster?

The doctor shook his head. The most he could do for me was mark my appointment as urgent and put me at the top of a cancellation list. But that wasn’t enough. I begged him for another X-ray, since I was sure that I broke something else in my sleep the other day.

He reminded me that this was extremely unlikely, but, to his credit, he eventually obliged. He said I could get the X-ray immediately, and we could talk about the result at my next appointment, four weeks later.

Four. Weeks.

It was the best I was going to get, so I hobbled with my walker to the imaging lab on the second floor. I did my best to follow the technician’s instructions, but I could barely turn my body the way I needed in order to get the pictures, and getting on and off the table was a slow and excruciating process. But somehow, we got what we needed, and I went home.

I checked the website every hour, waiting for my results to be uploaded into the system. It probably wasn’t going to show much, everyone reassured me. And that was a good thing. I hadn’t done anything to incur more fractures, after all, and I was about 50 years too young to break my back by sleeping funny. Besides, the doctors had told me recovery wasn’t going to be linear. I just needed to trust the process and give my body time to heal.

But I was sure I would find something in the X-ray. And when the report finally came back, I was the only one who was not surprised to find that the report listed two new compression fractures in my lumbar spine: L4 and L1.

And that was the first time throughout this whole experience that I really cried. Cried more than just incidental tears of frustration, or pain, or worry. I let myself cry.

I cried because how dare my healthy body turn on me like this.

I cried because I wasn’t sure how, if ever, I was going to be able to recover.

I cried because I had already lost so much time with my baby recovering from the first fractures, and now I had two brand-new ones to contend with.

But more than anything, I cried because I had been right.

I had known for months that what I was dealing with was more than just run-of-the-mill back pain, but doctor after doctor after emergency room doctor had dismissed me and rushed me out and refused to see my case as urgent. But now, something was undeniably wrong, and it was worse than it ever had to be because of all the time we’d wasted trying to convince people to take me seriously.

I cried so hard that day that my newly-fractured back began to ache with the sobs. And when my physical medicine doctor called me minutes after the X-ray results came back to discuss, I was sure he was going to apologize for not having taken me seriously.

Lol.

The doctor didn’t even believe that the fractures were new. He mumbled something about how, with X-rays, sometimes two pictures of the same spine can look totally different if they’re taken at different angles. Really there was no way to be sure from the pictures we had that these fractures hadn’t been there before. What we really needed to do was get another MRI and then we’d know for sure what was going on.

I scheduled the MRI for the next week, but I knew we had to do something sooner than that. No one had even given me a back brace yet, and every day I was left to my own devices I was at risk of hurting myself worse and worse and worse. If this doctor wasn’t going to get me the help I needed, then we were going to have to figure it out ourselves.

My family began pulling every string in the book to try to get me an appointment with a competent endocrinologist as soon as humanly possible. We spoke to friends who were doctors, friends who knew doctors, friends who got their PhD’s in biology alongside doctors, and the chain of connections looked like it might pan out. We were getting close to the top of the ladder.

And then one evening my parents found something.

Through googling some combination of “pregnancy,” “osteoporosis,” “back spasms,” and “vertebral fractures” they came across an article from 2019 where a doctor at Columbia named Dr. Adi Cohen was interviewed about a condition that she specialized in called Pregnancy and Lactation-Associated Osteoporosis (PLO).

“This is EXACLTY what’s happening to you!” my family said.

I read the article.

Rare Form of Osteoporosis Around Pregnancy Gets Spotlight at Columbia.

“…disabling back pain and bones that break out of the blue.”

“…difficult to function and even more difficult to care for a baby.”

“…often a considerable delay between onset of symptoms and diagnosis.”

This was exactly what was happening to me!

I googled “PLO osteoporosis” and read everything that I could find about the disease.

There were treatments. Weaning helped. Patients who were given medication showed significant improvement in as little as one month.

It was like the clouds had parted.

I copied the link and forwarded it to every doctor I had spoken to over the past few months.

“Have you heard anything about PLO? This is exactly what has been happening to me!”

Surely now the doctors would finally listen!

Lol.

The replies trickled back in.

“Unfortunately, it appears to be a rare condition…”

“You had osteoporosis even before pregnancy…”

[radio silence]

But I wasn’t letting myself get discouraged this time. I finally had my diagnosis, and best of all, I had the name of a doctor who actually knew what I was going through. So I reached out to her and the very next morning I had a response.

She was sorry to hear about my suffering.

She would love to speak to me.

They were doing a research study for cases like mine and had space for me if I’d be interested.

I was on cloud nine. Finally someone was taking me seriously.

Furthermore, our contact at UCSF was coming through and I’d be able to speak to an endocrinologist in the Bay Area who specialized in osteoporosis care as early as the next morning.

I looked forward to that call like it was Christmas day.

When we logged on, the very first thing the doctor told me was that I was going to get better, and to be honest, we could have ended the conversation then and there, I was so happy to hear those words. But there was more to talk about.

Stopping breastfeeding, he told me, was the best thing I could have done. See, when a person is pregnant, their body becomes extremely efficient at absorbing calcium, but once they have the baby, that efficiency goes away. The trouble is that if they’re breastfeeding, they’re still sustaining their baby’s complete nutritional needs from the stores of their own body, and without the extra calcium coming in, the body pulls it from the bones.

In most people, this doesn’t pose a problem even though bone density can go down by as much as 3% for each month of breastfeeding. But I had low bone density to begin with, and so my body couldn’t sustain it. My bones started to fracture, which led to muscle spasms, which led to more fractures, which led to more muscle spasms.

But once I started weaned, the doctor assured me, my body began to rebound. And yes it was going to take longer than I’d like, but I would recover. I just had to be prepared for my MRI the following week to come back with more compression fractures than I’d like.

I thanked him for his time, and left that call feeling more hopeful than I’d felt in months. And when my MRI came back lit up from top to bottom, I was prepared.

New acute compression fracture deformities at L1 and L4 vertebral bodies

Redemonstrated subacute/chronic compression deformities of L2 and L3

Multilevel degenerative changes, most pronounced at L5-S1

Mild compression fracture deformity at the superior endplate of T7, T8, T9, T10

It was bad, but it was proof.

And wouldn’t you know it? When confronted with that proof, it turned out that my physical medicine doctor did have strings he could pull to get me in to see an endocrinologist before February. In fact, he got me an appointment to see someone the very next day.

Now, as I write this, that appointment was only two weeks ago. But in the days that have passed since then, I have started to feel better than I have felt since my very first ER trip back in November. I was finally given a back brace, and when I wear it, I can walk without the use of a walker. I can put my pants on by myself again, I feel safe going up and down the stairs, and, best of all, I haven’t had any of that shudder-y spasm-y pain since early January. Today I even sat on the floor and played with Lyra, just in time for her half birthday tomorrow.

I’m finally healing.

I still have a long road ahead of me. We’re in the process now of deciding what treatment is right for us, and once we make that choice we will face battles with insurance and battles with side effects and battles with if and how to safely have future pregnancies.

I have secondary injuries from the fractures. My muscles have atrophied and my gait is slow and awkward. I have tendonitis in my shoulders from my weeks of supporting my weight with my arms. My knees hurt from sleeping with my legs elevated. I will have to undergo months, if not years, of physical therapy while I deal with these injuries. I will probably have at least small amounts of pain for a very long time, if not for the rest of my life. I will likely never run again. I have lost just under an inch of height, and I will never get that back. I will also never get back the baby bathtimes and bedtimes and walks with the stroller that I missed while I was lying in bed, unable to move without excruciating pain.

But, I will recover. I’ll be able to hold my kid again. I’ll be able to walk my dog. I’ll be able to hug my husband without worrying that he might squeeze too hard by mistake and send me to the hospital. I will likely even be able to get pregnant again, though I will almost certainly not breastfeed.

I’ll be able to live my life.

So thank you for reading my story. I wrote it in part because I’m a writer and writing is how I process things, but I also wrote it because people need to know about PLO, and premenopausal osteoporosis in general. Doctors need to know about it, patients need to know about it, and so do people who are wondering if that slip on the ice last winter was really enough to have caused their broken femur.

And maybe, if enough people read my story, one of the doctors who rushed me through the ER will think twice before they do it again. Or maybe someone across the country who’s having indescribable back pain lifting their ten-week-old will have something to bring to their doctor as evidence that what they’re going through isn’t normal. Maybe someone I’ve never met before will read my words and look up information about PLO on their phone and then, when their friend, or cousin, or neighbor, or kid starts to develop bizarre back spasms, they’ll remember what happened to me and they’ll talk about it. Maybe the next person will catch this disease early, before it gets any worse for them than it has to.

Maybe, eventually, the world will take women’s pain seriously.

Lol.