17/04/2024
Shortly after giving birth to her first child, singer-songwriter Lucy Rose went to lift her son out of his cot when she collapsed.
For what seemed like an eternity, she lay on the floor in agony with her back spasming.
Over the coming weeks, the pain only got worse.
"I couldn't pick up my baby, I couldn't push a pram, I couldn't even wash my hair," she tells the BBC.
If she needed to breastfeed, her husband Will had to lift the baby to her. When her parents persuaded her to go for a walk, she made it 100 yards before stopping and "begging to go back home".
At her NCT baby group, she asked other mothers if they'd experienced similar back pains. None of them had.
Her GP was no help, either.
"Every time I'd go in and it was the same thing," she says. "I'd be yelping in pain, then he'd prod my back and say, 'There's nothing wrong here - back pain is part and parcel of having a baby'.
"It got to the point where I was crying, begging for an MRI and the doctor told me I needed to dial it down and I was being over the top.
"It was really quite distressing."
Eventually, she went to a chiropractor. It was a big mistake.
"They cracked my back and it was the worst pain I've ever experienced," she says. "I was immediately like, 'That can't have been right, I'm going to be sick immediately'."
Looking back, she thinks that might have been the point where several of her vertebrae broke.
