Tailbone pain during pregnancy is extremely common, driven by a combination of hormonal changes, shifting posture, and increasing pressure on your pelvis. For most women, it starts in the second or third trimester and ranges from a dull ache to a sharp sting when sitting or standing up. Understanding what’s behind it can help you find real relief.
How Pregnancy Hormones Loosen Your Tailbone
Your body produces a hormone called relaxin during pregnancy. Its job is to loosen and relax the muscles, joints, and ligaments throughout your pelvis so your body can stretch to accommodate a growing baby and eventually deliver. That loosening is necessary, but it comes with side effects. When the ligaments around your pelvis become more flexible, the coccyx (your tailbone) loses some of its normal stability. It can shift in ways it normally wouldn’t, and that movement creates pain.
Relaxin doesn’t just affect the tailbone area. It loosens structures across your pelvis, back, and abdomen, which can make you feel weak or unstable. It can affect your posture, weaken your pelvic floor, and contribute to pelvic girdle pain, a broader category of discomfort that many pregnant women experience.
Why Your Pelvic Floor Muscles Make It Worse
Here’s a piece of the puzzle that surprises many people: as your pelvic ligaments get looser, the muscles of your pelvic floor often tighten up to compensate. Your pelvic floor muscles attach directly to the tailbone, and when they contract harder than usual to stabilize a pelvis that’s becoming increasingly flexible, they pull on the coccyx. That tension is a major driver of the sharp or aching pain you feel when you sit, stand, or shift positions.
This means tailbone pain during pregnancy isn’t just about bones and joints. It’s also a muscular issue, which is why stretching and pelvic floor work can be so effective at reducing symptoms.
The Weight and Posture Factor
As your baby grows, the added weight tilts your pelvis forward. This postural shift changes how force distributes through your spine and pelvis, putting extra load on the tailbone. The further along you are, the more pronounced this becomes, which is why tailbone pain tends to worsen in the third trimester.
Sitting for long periods concentrates that pressure directly on the coccyx. If you have a desk job or spend a lot of time in a car, you’ll likely notice the pain most during and immediately after sitting.
How Common Is It?
Very. A 2023 cross-sectional study of 163 postpartum women found that 88% were diagnosed with coccydynia (the clinical term for tailbone pain) after giving birth. While that study measured postpartum prevalence specifically, it reflects how widespread the issue is across late pregnancy and delivery. Many women develop tailbone pain during pregnancy itself, and others notice it for the first time after delivery, when pressure on the coccyx during birth can bruise or strain the area further.
Stretches That Relieve Tailbone Pressure
Gentle movement can reduce the muscular tension pulling on your tailbone. A few stretches are particularly well suited to pregnancy.
Cat-cow: Start on all fours with your shoulders over your wrists and hips over your knees. As you inhale, let your belly drop and your back arch gently (cow). As you exhale, press into your hands and round your upper back (cat). Repeat about 10 times. This mobilizes the spine and pelvis while taking direct pressure off the tailbone. If getting on the floor is uncomfortable later in pregnancy, you can do a standing version by placing your hands on a wall about two feet in front of you and performing the same arching and rounding motion.
Downward-facing dog: From all fours, tuck your toes and lift your hips up and back, pressing evenly into all ten fingers. You don’t need straight legs. Pedal your feet, bend your knees, and find a position that feels like a comfortable stretch through your back and legs. This lengthens the spine and creates space in the pelvis.
These stretches gently strengthen the lower back and abdominal muscles while increasing mobility, which addresses the root cause of much of the pain rather than just masking it.
Seating Changes That Help
If sitting is your biggest trigger, a cushion with a U-shaped or donut cutout at the back can make a significant difference. These designs let your tailbone hover over an open gap instead of pressing into the seat surface. The cutout redistributes your weight onto your sit bones (the bony points at the base of your pelvis), keeping the coccyx in a pressure-free zone. This is often enough to eliminate the sharp, stabbing pain that hits when you sit down or stand up.
A wedge-shaped cushion that tilts your pelvis slightly forward can also help by shifting your posture into a more neutral alignment. If you’re sitting for long stretches, getting up to walk around every 30 minutes prevents pressure from building.
What Happens After Delivery
For some women, tailbone pain resolves within a few weeks of giving birth as hormone levels normalize and the pelvic ligaments tighten back up. The soft tissues involved generally heal within four to six weeks after injury or strain. But for others, the pain persists well beyond that window. Chronic tailbone pain, lasting more than a couple of months, is not unusual, especially if the coccyx was bruised or shifted during delivery.
If your pain lingers postpartum, pelvic floor physical therapy is one of the most effective treatments. A therapist can assess whether your pelvic floor muscles remain tight or weak and guide you through targeted exercises. The same seating modifications and stretches that help during pregnancy continue to work afterward.