I feel like a hermit crab... with lower back pain.

Hello again! Hubby is at school, and I'm avoiding homework yet again, so I might as well blog. :) The new developments here are that of intense lower back pain and "nesting" (well, sort of, but I'll get to that in the next post, since this one is becoming long.)

First off, I'm really grateful I can eat more and smells aren't getting to me anymore (mostly) and I am usually not nauseous. In exchange, unfortunately, it is becoming a whole lot more common to experience mild to severe lower back pain. I can safely say that mothers who say, "Once you're in the second trimester, everything gets better," have never experienced severe lower back pain. I'm so happy I already have a doctor's appointment tomorrow, because I'm worrying myself to pieces wondering if this is "normal" for some pregnant women, or if this is a huge problem I should have addressed a week or so ago with a call to my doctor. Asking the internet is no help, of course. No, I don't have sciatica... no I don't think the pain is there... no I'm not having contractions. Hmm... I'm either fine and should exercise more, fine and should rest, or I'm in a rare emergency and might lose my unborn baby, but who am I to tell?

Hubby, help me plz. I can't get up.

The first time I felt like dying from lower back pain was two Sundays ago. I am the chorister for the primary children in my ward (what a congregation is called at an LDS church). I was about finished with teaching the older kiddos when my right side of my lower back started bothering me. No biggie, I'm just pregnant, I'll just hold my back with one hand and conduct the music with the other. Two minutes go by, the pain is becoming more intense, and radiating to the side and front of my abdomen; two more minutes and I am sweating, nauseous, and panicked from the severity of the pain! AAAH! I make it through the closing songs and exercises barely by sheer will power and (I'm sure) some heavenly intervention. It went away after a while, and I rested the rest of the day. I thought it was a fluke, but Monday after walking around a grocery store and coming home, here comes moderate back pain, and upon sitting/plopping down on my bed, AAAAAH! WHAT DID I EVEN DO?!? I lay on my side with pain as if my back, backside, and abdomen was just trampled by a horse and can't hardly move for the next 15 minutes. Thankfully, if I don't move from bed, the pain more or less recedes and doesn't start coming back unless I try to move again. After sleeping at night, I can get up and be fine if I take it easy. I don't know what I would do without my husband helping me through all of this! You have no idea how lucky I am. In spite of his full schedule for school, work, and church, he somehow finds time to do dishes, cook, and clean whenever I've felt horrible, useless, and exhausted and have stayed in bed quite literally all day (besides bathroom breaks).

I'll try to update this post when I find out what is causing my pain tomorrow at my doctor's appointment so others reading one day might solve their back problems mystery.