by Pamela Sosnowski

Created on: December 12, 2010   Last Updated: December 15, 2010

New moms who are experiencing sharp pain along the sides of their hands may be suffering from “mommy thumb.” The technical name for this medical condition is De Quervain’s tendinitis, which is when the tendons that extend from the thumbs down to the sides of the wrists become irritated and swollen due to repetitive motion and strain. The sensation can range from soreness that is confined to the thumbs to sharp pain that radiates up the forearms. It can become painful to form a fist or grasp an object. Doctors are diagnosing the condition to droves of mothers (and fathers, grandparents and nannies) who care for very young children. So what’s triggering this sudden increase of mommy thumb? Physicians have pinpointed several causes:

Incorrectly Lifting A Child

When most parents pick up their baby or toddler, they form an “L” shape with their fingers and thumbs and place their hands underneath the child’s armpits, scooping them up. By doing so, most of the child’s weight is now resting on the parent’s extended thumbs, putting extra stress on that area of the hands.

Heavier Children

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of children aged 6 months to 2 years old in 2004 who were considered overweight nearly doubled compared to data from 1980 (10.1percent vs. 5.7 percent.) Naturally, the more weight being pressed upon a parent’s hands, the more likely the tissue will feel the stress.

Older Parents

A 2009 study conducted by the University of Colorado discovered that people over the age of 40 were three times more likely to develop mommy thumb compared to younger people. This suggests that people who become parents after 40 are less likely to have some resilience in their hand tendons compared to their younger counterparts and are more susceptible to developing De Quervain’s tendinitis.

Lower Cribs
Many cribs being manufactured now are lower to the ground for safety reasons which means parents must lift their child over a longer distance when they pick them up.

Smartphone Overuse

The explosion of smartphone usage means most people use their thumbs while texting or scrolling the screen on a mobile device. When combined with the other factors above, the repetitive motions can aggravate mommy thumb (for non-parents, the condition has been dubbed "Blackberry thumb.")

The treatments often prescribed for mommy thumb range from icing the affected area to surgery for extreme

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