My younger son went through a phase around eighteen months where he refused to walk anywhere. Not in the supermarket, not from the car to the front door, not from one room to the next. He'd plant himself on the floor, lift his arms, and wait. He weighed about twelve kilos at the time, which doesn't sound like much until you've picked him up from the floor forty times before lunch.
That's the phase that broke my friend Mira's back. Literally — she ended up with a disc protrusion at L5-S1 and spent three months barely able to drive. She's a lawyer, not an athlete, and she'd never thought of toddler-lifting as a sport that required training. Most parents don't.
I want to talk about this because I think it's one of the most underestimated causes of sciatica and lower back pain I see in women in their thirties and early forties. Not desk work. Not running. Toddler lifting — done badly, done while exhausted, done while postpartum, done forty times a day for three or four years straight.
Why your back is so vulnerable in the toddler years
You spent nine months redistributing your organs to make room for a growing baby. Your abdominal wall stretched, your pelvic floor lengthened, your hip flexors shortened from all that extra sitting in the third trimester, and your transverse abdominis — the deep core muscle that's supposed to act like a built-in weightlifting belt — basically went on sabbatical.
Then you delivered. And whether that was vaginal or cesarean, your core didn't snap back the next morning. It takes months, sometimes years, for the deep stabilising muscles to reconnect properly. The official "postpartum period" being six weeks is one of the great lies of modern obstetrics. Functionally, you're rebuilding for at least eighteen months.
Now layer the toddler on top of that. A toddler is not a baby. A baby weighs five kilos, sleeps a lot, and stays where you put them. A toddler weighs ten to fifteen kilos, demands to be picked up at the worst possible angles, wriggles, arches their back when you're carrying them, and has zero awareness that mum's lumbar spine is screaming.
The result is a perfect storm: weakened deep core, repetitive asymmetric loading, fatigue, sleep deprivation, and a load that keeps getting heavier just as your body is trying to rehabilitate. No wonder so many mothers I know describe their thirties as "the back pain decade."
The mechanics of lifting — what you're probably doing wrong
When I watched Mira pick up her daughter, I saw the problem immediately. She bent at the waist with straight legs, scooped the child up, and twisted to her left to put her in the high chair. That single motion — flexion plus rotation under load — is the textbook recipe for a disc injury. Surgeons see it constantly.
Here's what's happening biomechanically. When you bend forward with straight legs, you've eliminated your hip hinge and forced all the movement through your lumbar spine. The discs in your lower back take a load that increases roughly with the square of the distance the weight is held from your spine. Add twisting, and you're shearing the disc as well as compressing it. The annulus fibrosus — the tough outer ring of the disc — does not enjoy this.
The correct pattern is boring and your toddler will hate it, but it works:
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking: "I cannot squat down forty times a day. I'd never get the dishes done." Fair. But here's the deal — even doing it correctly half the time is dramatically better than never doing it correctly. Pick the highest-frequency lifts (out of the cot, into the car seat, off the floor when they refuse to walk) and make those your non-negotiables.
The carrying problem nobody warns you about
Lifting gets all the attention, but I'd argue carrying is what actually destroys mothers' backs. A single bad lift can hurt you. Carrying a fifteen-kilo toddler on one hip for an hour, every day, for two years — that's the load that grinds down your SI joint and your quadratus lumborum until something finally gives.
The hip-carry is biomechanically catastrophic. You jut one hip out, the child sits on the shelf you've created, your spine compensates by side-bending the other way, and your quadratus lumborum on the load-bearing side spends the whole time in a shortened, contracted state. Meanwhile, your glute medius on the same side switches off because the bone is doing the work instead.
What I tell the mums in my callanetics classes:
- Switch sides constantly. Every minute or two. Even if it feels less natural — that's exactly the point. The "weak side" is the one that needs the practice.
- Use a carrier when possible. A good soft-structured carrier or a ring sling distributes the weight across both shoulders and your hips, not onto one side of your lumbar spine. This is non-negotiable for trips longer than five minutes.
- Engage your core when you're carrying, not just when you're lifting. Most people brace for the lift and then forget about it the moment the child is in their arms. That's backwards. Carrying is when the load is sustained — that's when you need the deep abdominal support active.
- Don't pop the hip. When you do need to carry on one side briefly, keep your hips level and your glutes engaged. The child sits in the crook of your arm, not on a hip shelf.
When your back is already complaining
If you're already in pain, the conversation changes. Lifting mechanics still matter, but you also need to manage the inflammation and the muscle guarding that's already happening.
A few things I'd suggest, in roughly this order:
Modify the environment, not just your technique. Raise the cot mattress to its highest setting. Use a low stool for the bath so you're not bending. Put a step in front of the changing table so the toddler can climb up themselves (this is good for their motor development anyway). Lower the car seat to the easiest-access position. Stop fighting the environment.
Wear a support brace during high-risk activities. This isn't a forever solution and I'd never tell anyone to live in a brace, but during a flare-up or on days when you know you'll be doing a lot of lifting (travel days, supermarket trips, days when grandma can't help), a properly designed support belt provides external compression that mimics what your weakened transverse abdominis should be doing. The HYKLE Sciatica & Lower Back Support Brace is the one Deso designed specifically with the hip-and-SI compression pattern that works for postpartum and lifting-related pain, rather than the wraparound style that sits up around your ribs. The reason that matters: traditional wraparound braces compress your upper abdomen, which can be uncomfortable and counterproductive. A brace that targets the hips and SI joint stabilises the area that actually needs it for lifting.
Strengthen, don't just stretch. Most postpartum back pain advice focuses on stretching tight hip flexors and hamstrings. That's part of it, but the bigger missing piece is usually strength. Glute bridges, dead bugs, bird dogs, suitcase carries with a small dumbbell — these rebuild the deep stabilisers. I wrote about some of the gentlest versions in my sciatica bed exercises article for days when you genuinely can't get on the floor.
Sleep matters more than you think. Discs rehydrate overnight. If you're sleeping four broken hours because your toddler is in a sleep regression, your disc health takes a real hit. I know there's nothing you can do about this except acknowledge it — but it does mean that on the bad-sleep weeks, lifting mechanics matter even more, not less.
The asymmetry trap
One more thing I see constantly. Mothers develop strong asymmetries — one side becomes the lifting side, one side becomes the carrying side, one hip becomes the resting hip when you're standing at the kitchen counter making toast. Over years, these asymmetries become structural.
A useful test: stand in front of a mirror, close your eyes, march in place for ten seconds, and then open your eyes without moving your feet. Are you facing forwards? Are your shoulders level? Are your hips level? Most mothers I've tested are visibly rotated towards their non-dominant side because they've been carrying on their dominant hip for years.
You can untangle this, but it takes intentional work. Carry on the non-dominant side deliberately. Lift one-handed grocery bags with the weaker arm. When you stand, alternate which leg you rest your weight on — or better, stand on both. Tiny corrections, applied daily, undo years of asymmetry.
A note on the comparison trap
I want to say something about Instagram mothers who do CrossFit with their toddler on their back. Good for them. They're not the standard you should measure yourself against if you're three months postpartum with a c-section scar and a six-week-old who only sleeps on your chest.
Recovery is not linear and it's not a race. Some of my callanetics students didn't feel their core properly reconnect until their child was two. Some had a second baby in the meantime and started the process over. The body's timeline is its own. The job in the toddler years isn't to "bounce back" — it's to lift, carry, and live in a way that doesn't accumulate damage you'll have to pay off in your fifties.
If you've already accumulated some damage, that's also fixable. I've worked with mothers in their forties who'd been in pain for a decade and got significantly better with consistent strength work and better mechanics. The body is more resilient than the wellness industry wants you to believe.
What to actually do tomorrow morning
Here's the abbreviated version, because if you're reading this with a toddler hanging off your leg, you don't have time for a long summary.
- Hinge and squat to pick them up. Get close. Brace. Lift with legs. Pivot with feet.
- Stop the hip-carry. Use a carrier or switch sides constantly.
- Raise the cot. Lower the car seat. Put a step at the changing table.
- If you're already sore, get a properly designed support brace for the worst days and stop carrying through the pain like it's a badge of honour.
- Strengthen the deep core. Even ten minutes a day of glute bridges and bird dogs will change your life.
- Sleep when you can. Forgive yourself when you can't.
The toddler years are short. Your spine is forever. The work you do now to lift well — and to rebuild what pregnancy and birth borrowed — is what determines whether you spend your fifties hiking with your grown children or managing chronic back pain. I know which one I'm choosing. I hope you choose it too.