Oy, my achin' back!

Imagine that you have been invaded by a parasite alien creature. This creature is growing at the rate of doubling its weight every few weeks. The alien starts to push on all of your internal organs. It pushes on your stomach, reducing its size to a third of the original. You can't eat a meal without feeling nauseated. It pushes on your lungs, reducing your lung volume so that you always feel short of breath. It presses on your bladder, enabling you to only hold a teaspoon of pee at a time, thus making you very familiar with the bathroom. It kicks you in your liver, pancreas, spleen and cervix all at the same time. Welcome to pregnancy.

So it is no surprise the increased mass of a baby, etc. makes you have occasional (or constant) pain. The most common joint complaint in pregnancy is sciatica. The sciatic nerve is the largest one in the human body and of course, it lies right where the baby's head sits. Compress the sciatic nerve and you get shooting leg and foot pains. Another common joint complaint in PG is carpal tunnel syndrome. Read more about sciatica here. Yeah, that same thing that secretaries and gamers get. The water gain and swelling of pregnancy can compress the median nerve and lead to hand pain. Babycenter.com has this article on it. So all you PG ladies out there, this is a reason to have you man assigned to foot massage duty.