Part of Pregnancy back and pelvic pain
Can pelvic girdle pain be one sided, and why does one side hurt more?
Warning signs, and when to get help
One sided pelvic girdle pain: who to tell first
One sided pelvic girdle pain is common, and the phone call still comes before the explanation. One sided pelvic pain in pregnancy is a symptom, not a diagnosis, and some of what produces it has nothing to do with joints and will not wait while you read about asymmetric loading.
So: tell your midwife, or the maternity unit or doctor looking after your pregnancy, about any new or changed pelvic pain, and tell them which side it is on. Everything else here waits behind that.
Three things the NHS asks you to report, each of which can present as pain on one side.
Low down on one side early in pregnancy. The NHS lists tummy pain low down on one side among the possible signs of a pregnancy growing outside the womb, alongside a missed period and other signs of pregnancy, vaginal bleeding or a brown watery discharge, pain in the tip of the shoulder, and discomfort when peeing or pooing. It sends the combination of a sharp, sudden and intense pain in your tummy with feeling very dizzy or fainting, feeling sick, or looking very pale to emergency services or an emergency department immediately.
Pain under the ribs on one side. The NHS asks you to contact your GP or midwife urgently about back pain that comes with pain in one or more sides under your ribs, and its stomach pain page says pain under the ribs that is bad or persistent, particularly on the right side, may be a sign of pre-eclampsia, which the warning list below sends to your maternity unit straight away.
One side of your back just under the ribs, with a temperature or trouble peeing. That pattern points at a urine or kidney infection, and it has its own line on the warning list at the foot of this page.
Add the ones that are not about sides at all and apply whatever your pain is doing: any bleeding, your waters breaking, regular tightenings or period-type pains before 37 weeks, backache that is not usual for you, reduced or changed baby movements, and new back pain in the second or third trimester, which the NHS treats as a possible sign of early labor.
None of that means your pain is sinister. Most one sided pelvic pain in pregnancy is pelvic girdle pain. It means the order matters: report it, get it checked, and then the rest of this is useful.
Can pelvic girdle pain be one sided?
Yes. One sided pelvic girdle pain is not a variant or an exception, it is the ordinary presentation, and the NHS description says so without making a point of it: pain over the pubic bone, across one or both sides of the lower back, in the area between the vagina and anus, or spreading into the thighs.
The anatomy makes it obvious once you have the picture. Three joints are involved. One at the front, where the two halves of the pelvis meet at the pubic bone. One at the back on each side, where the pelvis meets the base of the spine, called the sacroiliac joints. The European guideline on pelvic girdle pain locates the pain particularly in the vicinity of the sacroiliac joint, and there are two of those. Nothing requires them to be equally sore, any more than both your knees have to ache at once.
What one sided pain is not is evidence that the diagnosis is wrong. In clinic it is the commonest thing women apologize for: they have read that pelvic girdle pain affects the pelvis, their pain is on the left, and they assume they have something else. The main pregnancy back and pelvic pain program applies in full.
Why it is usually worse on one side
There are two answers, one from the research on the joints and one from how your day is actually built. The second is more useful, but the first is more interesting, because it turns the usual story on its head.
The study people cite looked at 163 women at 36 weeks of pregnancy, 73 with moderate or severe pregnancy-related pelvic pain and 90 with none or mild pain, and measured how much each sacroiliac joint moved using Doppler imaging of vibrations (Damen and colleagues, 2001). The obvious prediction is that the sore group would have looser joints. They did not: average laxity was no higher in the painful group, and the authors' conclusion is that increased sacroiliac joint laxity is not associated with this pain.
What did differ was the gap between the two sides. Uneven laxity, left against right, was present in 37 percent of the women with pain compared with 4 percent of those without, and within the painful group the women with uneven joints reported more pain and more difficulty than those whose joints were evenly lax.
A follow-up of 123 women took the same measurement at 36 weeks and looked at who still had pain 8 weeks after the birth. Among women with moderate to severe pain in pregnancy, an uneven measurement was linked to a higher chance of the pain persisting (Damen and colleagues, 2002).
Read the limits before you take anything from that, because there is nothing here for you to act on. Doppler imaging of vibrations is a research measurement, not something your physio can run on you, so this is an explanation and not a test you can ask for or a prediction about you. The first study was cross-sectional, so it cannot say whether uneven joints came first. And none of it says which side will be the sore one, or what your own pain will do after the birth.
The second answer needs no equipment. Almost everything that provokes this pain is a moment when your two legs are doing different things: standing on one leg to put a sock on, the split second on each stair, swinging one leg out of the car, rolling one knee across the other in bed. Nobody does those symmetrically. You have a leading leg on stairs, a side you get out of bed on, a hip you carry a toddler on, and a side of the sofa you sit on. The joint on the hard-working side gets more of it, all day, every day, and it is the one that complains.
The movement research supports the general direction here: a systematic review of 10 studies rated the evidence as moderate for altered pelvic motor control and mobility in women with this pain, though those were observational studies and cannot say which came first (Aldabe and colleagues, 2012).
Does it matter which side?
Not for the diagnosis. We have found no source showing that left sided pelvic girdle pain means anything different from right sided, so you can stop looking for significance in which side it is. Right sided pain is the same condition as left sided pain, gets the same assessment and gets the same program.
Two exceptions are worth knowing, and neither is pelvic girdle pain. Pain under the ribs that is bad or persistent, particularly on the right, is on the NHS list of possible pre-eclampsia signs. Tummy pain low down on one side, either side, early in pregnancy is on the NHS list for a pregnancy growing outside the womb. Both are on the warning list below, and both are about the upper abdomen or the lower tummy rather than the pelvic joints.
What does matter practically is knowing which side yours is, and saying so. An assessment goes faster when the physio knows which joint to start with, and the day-to-day changes further down this page are all decided by which side you are protecting. Write it down before the appointment: which side, where exactly, and which three movements set it off.
One side only, or just worse on one side?
These are different questions and they get different answers, although they usually get lumped together.
Worse on one side, with something going on at the other side or at the front as well, is the pattern that fits the research above and fits what we see in clinic. Pain on both sides at the back plus the pubic joint at the front, with one side louder, is completely ordinary. So is a pattern that swaps sides over weeks, because the sides take turns taking the load.
One side only, with nothing anywhere else in the pelvis, changes nothing about the diagnosis or the program. It does not rule pelvic girdle pain in or out, and no source we can cite sets a threshold there, so treat what follows as the reason physios ask about it rather than as a test. The reason is simply that most of the pains this page separates from pelvic girdle pain are one-sided too, and one of them has a long record of being read as pelvic girdle pain for weeks. So a strictly one-sided pain that is not settling with the position advice and pacing gets reported rather than explained, and the hip line on the warning list says what to say.
That one is a temporary weakening of the bone at the top of the thighbone. A review of the published cases describes hip pain that limits weight bearing and getting about, with a mean delay of around 7 weeks before it is diagnosed and a median of four, and MRI as the test that shows it. One large case series inside that review found the symptoms on one side only in about three quarters of the women (Morton 2024), and in that series of 34 women, half were diagnosed after the birth rather than during the pregnancy (Toussia-Cohen 2023). The pattern to notice is weight bearing hip or groin pain on one side that makes you limp or need a crutch and that is not settling with the position advice and pacing.
Two things in that review decide what you do about it. The first is what the delay costs. A fracture of that bone was reported in about a quarter of the published cases, the average time from the pain starting to a fracture was about 5 weeks against about 7 weeks to a diagnosis, and 8 of the 10 women who broke it before delivery had not been diagnosed when it happened (Morton 2024). Published cases are the serious ones, so that quarter tells you the risk is real rather than how likely it is for you, but the order of those two numbers is the whole argument for not waiting.
The second is what to do with the leg meanwhile. In the same condition in men and non-pregnant women, the conservative treatment in the published studies was simple painkillers and restricted weight bearing, and in pregnancy the review says plainly that there is no evidence to guide treatment at all (Morton 2024). So until you have been assessed, take the weight off that leg where you can instead of working harder at the limp, and the line on the warning list says what that looks like. How it is treated, whether it changes how you give birth and whether it affects breastfeeding are not settled by any study, which makes them decisions for your own maternity and orthopaedic teams rather than for a page.
So if weight bearing hip or groin pain on one side is no better after a week or two of the position advice and pacing, go back, say the pain is in your hip rather than only your pelvis, and ask what is being done to rule out the bone. The review's own conclusion is that an MRI should be considered in any pregnant woman whose hip pain has no other explanation, and it records two women who were not scanned because of concern for the baby and who were among those who fractured before anyone made the diagnosis (Morton 2024). The wording you use decides which assessment you get, and asking a second time is reasonable here rather than pushy.
Pain that arrived in a single moment, with a crack, pop or tearing feeling over the pubic bone, has its own warning lines and is a different problem again (Stolarczyk 2021). If that is what happened, stay off it rather than testing whether you can still walk, and let the maternity unit decide what it is. Get help to move if there is someone with you, and call emergency services if you cannot stand or walk at all. Pelvic girdle pain builds over days and weeks, even when it ends up severe.
One sided pains in pregnancy that are not pelvic girdle pain
Short list, because the detail belongs on the pages that own each one.
Sharp cramp on one side of the lower tummy. The NHS describes ligament pain, often called growing pains, as feeling like a sharp cramp on one side of the lower tummy, among its harmless causes of stomach pain in pregnancy. Lightning crotch and round ligament pain covers that family and what separates it from pelvic pain.
Pain down the back of one leg. Pelvic girdle pain can spread into the thigh, which is why so many women arrive having diagnosed themselves with sciatica. Pelvic girdle pain or sciatica in pregnancy is the page for that question, and sciatica is the program if that is what it turns out to be.
Outer hip pain on one side, or pain in one hip at night. If the sore spot is on the bony point at the side of your hip rather than in the pelvis, outer hip pain and hip pain at night describe that pattern. In pregnancy it still goes through your midwife first, and the hip warning lines in the list at the foot of this page apply.
One sided lower back pain. Lower back pain on one side runs through the other causes of that pattern, including the ones that are not musculoskeletal.
Groin pain. Groin pain covers what else is in that area. A new lump or swelling in the groin is a separate matter from pain and has its own line on the warning list, because it needs examining rather than explaining.
One sided tightenings or period-type pains before 37 weeks. That goes to your maternity unit straight away, whichever side it is on, and pelvic girdle pain or contractions is about exactly that uncertainty.
What to do about the painful side day to day
The general advice for pelvic girdle pain is on the main program and in what to avoid with pelvic girdle pain. What follows is only the part that changes when one side is worse.
Pick a side of the bed and stay on it. Roll toward the less painful side when you get out, every time, so it becomes automatic at 3am. That may mean swapping sides of the bed with your partner, or putting your phone and water on the other side so you are not reaching across. The log roll is the movement itself, knees together, shoulders and hips turning as one piece.
Lead with the less painful leg going up stairs, and let it take the weight going down. One step at a time, or sideways, and hold the rail on the side that lets you do that. If the rail is on the wrong side, go up sideways with your good side leading.
Get into the car on the seat first, then swing both legs round together with knees and ankles touching. Getting out, the same in reverse. The usual mistake is putting the sore leg out first to brace on.
Carry on the less painful side, if you must carry at all, and share the weight between two bags rather than one. Watch the toddler-on-one-hip habit, because that one loads the same joint for an hour at a time without you noticing.
Sit evenly on both buttocks, which is the one that quietly undoes the rest. The usual pattern is to shift the weight off the sore side, which loads the other joint and gives you a second sore side in a couple of weeks.
Standing jobs, in the kitchen or at a sink, are the ones to make symmetrical: both feet level, about hip width apart, weight even. Sitting down for anything you would otherwise do standing on one leg is the single most useful change most women make.
All of that is for pain you can still walk on. There is a line where working around the painful side stops being the answer: if you are limping, reaching for a crutch or a stick, or the pain is in the hip or groin and comes on as you put weight through that leg, the job is to take weight off it and get it looked at rather than to adapt harder. Keeping going on a leg that will not take your weight is how the hip problem higher up this page goes unnoticed for weeks.
One thing to tell your physio: which side, and which of the above you cannot manage. A weak pelvic floor with back and hip pain covers a pattern that often sits underneath this one, and the postnatal core and pelvic floor program is where this goes after the birth.
When one sided pelvic pain needs checking
Everything in the section at the top of this page still applies, and the warning list below gives each line its own timeframe.
Beyond those, ask your midwife or GP for a physio referral if the pain makes it hard to move around, if getting out of a car or turning over in bed hurts, or if stairs are painful, which is the NHS's own threshold. POGP asks you to get help if your symptoms are not improving with the position and pacing advice within a week or two, or if they are affecting your sleep and daily activities, and says you should be referred to a specialist pelvic health physiotherapist. The RCOG says early diagnosis and treatment should stop symptoms worsening for most women, which is the argument for going sooner rather than at 34 weeks.
Four things are worth saying out loud at that appointment, because they change what gets examined: which side, whether anything hurts at the front over the pubic bone or on the other side at all, whether you are limping or using a crutch, and whether it is getting worse week on week. The last two are what move a weight bearing hip pain from a pacing conversation to a scan. If that is your pattern and the answer is another round of pacing advice, it is fair to ask straight out whether the hip itself has been ruled out and what scan would do it.
Red flags in physiotherapy explains how to read the list below.
Related exercise programs
Warning signs
Get emergency help now
- Emergency: anything that looks life threatening, at any stage of pregnancy. Call emergency services without stopping to work out which line below fits: 999 in the UK, 112 in the UK and anywhere in Europe, 911 in the United States and Canada, 000 in Australia, 111 in New Zealand. Say how many weeks pregnant you are, and say it again to each new person you speak to (NHS).
- Emergency: heavy bleeding from your vagina, for example soaking a pad soon after you put it on, or any bleeding with severe pain in your tummy, pain in your shoulder, or feeling sick, faint or dizzy. Call emergency services straight away.
- Emergency: pain in your lower tummy or pelvis that is severe, is getting worse, or hurts when you move or touch the area, or that comes with feeling faint, dizzy or lightheaded, passing out, pain at the tip of your shoulder, trouble breathing, heavy bleeding from the vagina, or sudden confusion. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away. Tell them if there is any chance you are pregnant.
- Emergency: a very high or a very low temperature, shivering you cannot control, breathing very fast or finding it hard to breathe, being confused or slurring your speech, skin, lips or a tongue that look blue, gray, pale or blotchy (on brown or black skin this can be easier to see on the palms of the hands or soles of the feet), or a rash that does not fade when you press it. Call emergency services, as this can be sepsis.
- Emergency: pelvic or pubic pain that has suddenly left you unable to stand, walk or put weight on one or both legs. Call emergency services if you cannot stand or walk at all, or you cannot get to a hospital safely. Until help reaches you, stay where you are rather than trying to get yourself up: lie on your side with your knees together and a pillow between them, and do not stand on one leg or let your legs come apart.
- Emergency: hip or groin pain on one side that suddenly becomes much worse, or a leg that will not take your weight at all. Go to an emergency department straight away, and say you are pregnant and that the top of the thighbone may be involved, because pregnancy can weaken the bone there and weakened bone can crack. Call emergency services if you cannot stand or walk at all, or cannot get there safely.
- Emergency: you have a lump in your groin and the pain in it is severe or came on suddenly, you cannot poo or pass wind at all, you are vomiting blood or your vomit looks like coffee grounds, or you have suddenly become confused. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not try to push the lump back in yourself. A hernia that has become trapped can block the bowel or cut off the blood supply to whatever is caught in it (NHS).
- Emergency: you suddenly become short of breath, you get chest pain or pain in your upper back that may be worse when you breathe in, you cough up blood, your heart is beating very fast, or you faint. Call emergency services straight away, even if your leg looks normal. These can be signs of a blood clot in the lungs (pulmonary embolism).
- Emergency: numbness, tingling or altered feeling around or under your genitals, between your inner thighs, or around your bottom (anus), for example it feels different when you wipe after using the toilet. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away. This can be a sign of pressure on the bundle of nerves at the base of the spine (cauda equina syndrome), which needs emergency treatment.
- Emergency: you find it hard to start peeing, cannot pee, cannot feel yourself peeing or cannot control when you pee, or you do not notice when you need to poo or cannot control when you poo, and this is not normal for you. The same applies to a new change in how your genitals feel during sex, or new trouble getting an erection or ejaculating. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away. These can also be signs of cauda equina syndrome.
- Emergency: sciatica in both legs, or pain, tingling, numbness or weakness in both legs. The same applies if you lose feeling in one leg. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away.
- Emergency: you have had cancer, now or in the past, and your back or neck pain feels like a tight band around your body, or comes with pain spreading down an arm or leg, weakness, numbness or pins and needles in your arms or legs, trouble walking, or trouble controlling your bladder or bowels. Call your cancer team's emergency number straight away, or go to an emergency department if you do not have one or cannot get through. This can be cancer pressing on the spinal cord (metastatic spinal cord compression), which needs treatment straight away.
- Emergency: you have thoughts of ending your life or of harming yourself or your baby and feel you might act on them, you have already harmed yourself, or you do not feel you can keep yourself or your baby safe. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away.
Get help now, day or night
- Who to call for every line below that says to contact your midwife or maternity unit: call them straight away, day or night, on the number in your maternity notes. In the first 12 weeks, before your first midwife appointment, the NHS routes these calls to a GP surgery or an early pregnancy unit, and from 12 to 19 weeks to a midwife or an early pregnancy unit, so you do not need a maternity unit of your own yet to be seen. Outside the UK, call your obstetrician, or the maternity or labor and delivery unit where your birth is booked. If you cannot reach anyone and you are worried, call NHS 111 in the UK, and anywhere, go to your maternity unit or an emergency department rather than waiting at home (NHS).
- Tummy pain that does not go away after you have rested for 30 to 60 minutes, or that comes with lower back pain, vaginal discharge that is unusual for you, regular cramping or tightenings, pain when you pee, or needing to pee suddenly or more often than usual (NHS). The same applies to back or pelvic pain that comes on suddenly, is getting worse quickly or is much worse than your usual pain. Contact your maternity unit straight away. Call emergency services if the tummy pain is severe, any pain comes with bleeding from your vagina, or tummy pain comes with pain in your shoulder or feeling sick, faint or dizzy.
- Lower tummy or pelvic pain and you are pregnant or think you might be. Contact your midwife or maternity unit straight away if you are pregnant, or get medical advice the same day if you might be. Pain low in the tummy early in pregnancy needs checking, because a pregnancy can grow outside the womb (ectopic pregnancy).
- Any bleeding or spotting from your vagina, even if it is light and you have no pain. Contact your midwife or maternity unit straight away.
- Your waters break, or you have a gush or trickle of fluid from your vagina, at any stage of pregnancy. Contact your midwife or maternity unit straight away.
- Before 37 weeks, you have regular tightenings or contractions, period-type pains, or backache that is not usual for you. Contact your midwife or maternity unit straight away, as this can be a sign of early (premature) labor.
- New back pain in the second or third trimester (from 13 weeks), even if you think it is PGP or ordinary backache. Contact your midwife or maternity unit straight away, as it can be a sign of early labor. Once they have checked it, follow their advice about when to call again.
- Your baby is moving less than usual, you cannot feel your baby moving anymore, or the usual pattern of movements has changed. Contact your midwife or maternity unit straight away, even in the middle of the night. Do not wait until the next day, and do not use a home heartbeat monitor to check.
- A severe headache that does not go away with simple painkillers, problems with your vision such as blurring or flashing lights, pain just below your ribs, sudden swelling of your face, hands or feet, being sick (vomiting), heartburn that does not go away with heartburn medicines, or feeling very unwell. Contact your maternity unit straight away, as these can be signs of pre-eclampsia, which needs checking and treating quickly. The same applies to a headache after an epidural or spinal anesthetic that gets worse when you sit or stand up and eases when you lie down. Call emergency services if you have a fit (seizure), or a headache that came on suddenly and is very severe. Call emergency services too if you have a headache with a stiff neck and either a high temperature or bright light hurting your eyes, as this can be meningitis.
- Back pain with a high temperature (38C or above), feeling hotter than usual or shivery, pain or burning when you pee, pee that looks cloudy, pink, red or brown, or pain in one or both sides of your back just under the ribs. Contact your midwife, maternity unit or doctor straight away, as this can be a urine or kidney infection, which is usually treated easily once someone has seen you (NHS). Call emergency services instead if you have any of the signs of sepsis in the emergency warnings above.
- Pelvic or pubic pain that came on in a single moment, for example during the birth, a fall or a wide step, with a crack, pop or tearing feeling over your pubic bone. Contact your maternity unit straight away, and ask them to check the joint at the front of your pelvis. While you wait, keep off it rather than walking it off: lie on your side with your knees together and a pillow between them, get help to move if there is someone with you, and do not stand on one leg or let your legs come apart. If you cannot stand or walk at all, or you cannot get to a hospital safely, call emergency services. Separation of that joint (pubic symphysis diastasis) is uncommon, is not the same as the pelvic girdle pain this page is about, is confirmed on a scan rather than by how much it hurts, and is first treated with a pelvic support belt and side lying, so ask about a belt at that appointment (Stolarczyk 2021). Pain that has built up over days or weeks, even when it is severe, is the usual pattern of pelvic girdle pain.
- A calf or thigh that is newly swollen or getting more swollen, warm, tender, red or darker than usual, has swollen veins that are sore to touch, or has a throbbing or cramping pain that does not fit your injury or condition, or that feels different from normal muscle soreness after exercise. This can be a sign of a blood clot (deep vein thrombosis), especially after surgery, an injury, time in a cast or boot, a long trip or a spell of being much less mobile than usual. Get medical advice the same day. If you are also short of breath or have chest pain, call emergency services. Pregnancy and the first 6 weeks after giving birth also make a clot more likely, so if you are pregnant or gave birth in the last 6 weeks, contact your maternity unit, midwife or GP straight away.
- You fall, or your bump is knocked or hit, for example in a car accident, even if you feel fine. Contact your maternity unit straight away so you and your baby can be checked.
- You are out of breath when you lie down, or breathlessness comes with dizziness. Contact your maternity unit straight away. If you are severely short of breath when you are resting, or so breathless that you are gasping or cannot get your words out, call emergency services. Feeling a little more out of breath as your baby grows is common, but this pattern needs checking.
Get help today
- Same day: a lump in your groin that becomes painful, hard or red, that you cannot push back in, or that comes with a bloated tummy, feeling or being sick, constipation or a high temperature. Get medical help the same day, in person rather than by phone, for example at urgent care or an emergency department, as these can mean a hernia has become trapped (NHS). Do not try to push the lump back in yourself.
- Same day: a leg or foot that is getting weaker, for example your foot drags, catches on the ground or slaps down when you walk (foot drop). Get medical advice the same day. If the weakness is getting worse by the hour, go to an emergency department.
- Same day: new back pain and you have had cancer, now or in the past. Get medical advice the same day and mention your cancer history. If you are being treated for cancer now, contact your cancer team the same day.
- Same day: dizziness, lightheadedness or feeling faint while you are exercising, or the room seems to spin. Stop, and sit down or lie on your side until it passes. Contact your midwife or maternity unit the same day, and do not exercise again until you have been checked, as dizziness is one of the signs to stop exercising in pregnancy. If you faint, it does not settle within a few minutes of keeping still, or you cannot stand or walk steadily, call emergency services.
- Thoughts of suicide or of harming yourself or your baby, even if you do not plan to act on them. Get urgent help the same day from your GP, midwife or health visitor, or NHS 111 in the UK. In the UK, you can also talk to Samaritans on 116 123.
Book an appointment
- Within a few days: hip or groin pain, usually on one side, that is worse when you put weight on that leg, that makes you limp or need a stick or crutch, or that has not eased with position changes and pacing. Ask your midwife or doctor for a review, and say the pain is in your hip rather than only your pelvis. While you wait, take the weight off that leg where you can: lean on a crutch, a stick, a shopping cart or a stroller, use the rail and one step at a time on stairs, sit down for jobs you would do standing on one leg, and do not push through pain you have to limp on. Pregnancy and the weeks after the birth can cause a temporary weakening of the bone at the top of the thighbone, which is uncommon, is often read as pelvic girdle pain for weeks, and shows up on an MRI scan, which is the test to ask about when hip pain has no other explanation (Morton 2024). If the pain suddenly becomes much worse, or that leg will not take your weight at all, do not wait for the review: go to an emergency department straight away, as the emergency warnings above say.
- Within a few days: a new lump or swelling in your groin, especially one that gets bigger when you cough, sneeze or stand and smaller when you lie down. Tell your midwife or doctor, because a lump there needs examining rather than explaining, and an ultrasound scan is what separates swollen veins alongside the round ligament from a hernia (Yeo 2021). Do not try to push the lump back in yourself, and use the same day line above instead if the lump becomes painful, hard or red or you cannot push it back in.
- Low mood, anxiety or stress that is affecting your day to day life, or pain that is causing you considerable distress. Tell your midwife or doctor and ask what support is available, because this is part of what gets treated rather than something to put up with (NHS; RCOG; POGP).
Common questions
Can pelvic girdle pain be one sided?
Yes, and one sided is the ordinary way it turns up rather than an exception. The NHS describes pelvic girdle pain as being felt over the pubic bone, across one or both sides of the lower back, between the vagina and anus, or spreading into the thighs, so one or both is in the description itself. There are three joints involved, one at the front of the pelvis and one on each side at the back, and they are not obliged to hurt equally. What one sided pain does change is the checking: pelvic pain on one side in pregnancy has causes that are not musculoskeletal, so a new or changed one sided pain goes to your midwife or maternity unit before it goes to an exercise program.
Why is my pelvic girdle pain worse on one side?
The research points at unevenness rather than looseness. A cross-sectional study of 163 women at 36 weeks measured sacroiliac joint laxity and found that average laxity did not separate the women with moderate or severe pelvic pain from the women with none or mild pain. What did separate them was the difference between left and right: uneven laxity was present in 37 percent of the women with pain and 4 percent of those without (Damen and colleagues, 2001). That measurement is a research tool rather than anything your physio can run on you, so it explains the pattern and does not predict yours. The everyday explanation sits alongside it: almost everything that provokes this pain is a moment when your two legs are doing different things, and most people have a habitual side for stairs, for getting out of the car and for turning in bed.
Does it matter which side my pelvic girdle pain is on?
Not as far as anything we can cite is concerned. We have found no source showing that left means one thing and right means another in pelvic girdle pain, so a right sided pain is not a different condition from a left sided one. Two specific exceptions belong to other problems rather than to this one, and both are on the warning list on this page: the NHS flags pain under the ribs, particularly on the right side, as a possible sign of pre-eclampsia, and it lists tummy pain low down on one side among the signs of a pregnancy growing outside the womb early on.
Is one sided pelvic pain in pregnancy normal?
That is the wrong question to settle at home, and it is why reporting it comes first. One sided pelvic girdle pain is common. One sided pelvic pain, as a symptom, is not one thing: it can come from the pelvic joints, from a urine or kidney infection, from the round ligament, from early labor, and early in pregnancy from a pregnancy growing outside the womb. The pattern that fits pelvic girdle pain is pain that built up over days or weeks and comes on with particular movements. Pain that arrived in a single moment, is severe, is getting worse quickly, or comes with bleeding, a temperature, pain in the tip of your shoulder or feeling faint needs your maternity unit or emergency services, whichever the warning list below says.
Can pelvic girdle pain spread down one leg?
It can reach the thigh. The NHS includes pain spreading into the thighs in its description of pelvic girdle pain, which is the commonest reason women arrive convinced they have sciatica. Pain that travels below the knee is a different matter, and so are numbness, pins and needles or weakness anywhere in the leg or foot, which is what pelvic girdle pain or sciatica in pregnancy is for. Symptoms in both legs at once, numbness around the genitals or bottom, or new trouble controlling your bladder or bowels are emergencies and have their own lines on the warning list below.
References
- NHS. Pelvic pain in pregnancy. Page last reviewed 12 December 2022. https://www.nhs.uk/pregnancy/common-symptoms/pelvic-pain/
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Written and checked by the PocketPhysio editorial team. Last updated 2026-10-23.
This page is general education, not a diagnosis or a personal treatment plan. See a physiotherapist or doctor for advice about your own situation.