Becoming a mom means you will slowly develop a skill set you never thought you'd ever have. You can detect a stinky diaper from two rooms away (and know whether it belongs to your child or not), you can multi-task better than any CEO and you can retrieve dropped items so quickly your child won't have a moment to fuss over it. Unfortunately being able to twist and turn and contort your body into a myriad of positions to grab a sippy cup that your toddler dropped may not be the best thing for your body.

Lindsay Powers is a mom of two boys who wrote the upcoming book You Can't F*ck Up Your Kids. Powers recently underwent shoulder surgery as a result of doing something parents are guilty of every day, and she's hoping that her story will be a wake-up call to other parents. Powers explained to POPSUGAR that she would often find herself reaching behind her seat while in the car to pick something up one of her children would drop. "Drives with my kids can be stressful," she told the website. "They have a million demands. They are constantly asking for snacks and toys and dropping things. And I used to be quick to grab those things to keep the peace. With a 3-year-old and 5-year-old, everything escalates quickly"

Unfortunately for Powers, two years ago next month she "instantly felt a pop" while retrieving a dropped item in the backseat of her Honda CRV. "It started as a dull pain, but by the Spring, I couldn't pick up a gallon of milk anymore," she said. "I knew I had to do something because it was interfering with my day-to-day life. But you know how mom life is . . . you put things off forever because the to-do list never ends, and we usually don't prioritize our own needs. I figured it would just go away, and it didn't."

Powers had torn her rotator cuff and her labrum. Cortisone shots and physical therapy helped a little, but Powers' injury just kept getting worse, to the point where she could no longer even look at her watch on her wrist. Finally this month, Powers decided to have shoulder surgery, even though it means six weeks in a sling and not being able to lift anything heavier than a coffee cup. Now she's warning other parents that the act of reaching into the back seat of the car while in the front seat can do some serious damage, especially if your shoulder is already strained. While one PT told her that reaching into the backseat wouldn't have caused the kind of damage she had, another said, "the reach could have been the straw that broke the camel's back on an already stressed shoulder." Mothers are often doing a lot of heavy lifting, especially with infants and toddlers who require heavy car seats, strollers, and swings. "The PT told me he sees at least three people a year with shoulder injuries from pushing strollers," she added.

Now the author says that she refuses to wrench her body into an uncomfortable position just so she can pick something up for her children. If they drop something in the car she refuses to pick it up until she's fully stopped and can turn her entire body around. "There is nothing wrong with refusing to contort yourself to pick up your kid's Legos from the backseat of the car. There is literally no way we can do it all, and this has been a physical reminder of that."

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