Are you having groin pain, pressure or a gassy feeling there only overnight, particularly after you get back into bed after relieving yourself?
My UTI caused these symptoms.
Sometimes, the symptoms of a urinary tract infection don’t align 100 percent with those generic symptom lists on the many sites out there.
How My UTI Presented Itself
Normally I’m awakened by the need to void once or twice overnight, and occasionally three times.
As a postmenopausal woman, I can blame urogenital atrophy on this, especially since the nocturia wasn’t this bad prior to menopause.
The amount of urine output is never that much. It’s just that there’s something about having been asleep that makes my bladder more sensitive to small amounts of urine.
When I return to bed after voiding, I always feel great relief.
One night I noticed that there was a slight gassy feeling in my groin, and thought it was related to something I’d eaten.
After a few days, here’s what then happened:
I’d go to bed feeling normal. A few hours later, I’d be awakened by nature’s calling.
I’d get back into bed after voiding. But instead of feeling that relief of having just emptied myself (of that small amount of urine), I experienced a different kind of sensation in my groin.
It was very uncomfortable. The best way to describe this pain is gassy or crampy. And it was concentrated in my groin.
It did NOT feel like an incomplete void. It did NOT feel as though I had a full bladder. It was a new kind of discomfort that I’d never felt before.
This went for three nights. It was so uncomfortable it interfered with my sleep.
I’d eventually fall back asleep, only to be awakened by the routine urge to urinate, which felt as it had always.
It was only when I got back into bed, that something felt wrong in my groin.
My UTI Groin Symptom and Sleep
The weird thing is that this pain was not present during the day. However, my groin area did feel a little off or dissonant during daytime.
There were no other symptoms: no excessive frequency; no burning with urination; no difficulty with the urine stream; no foul odor; no pain anywhere else, and a normal urine color.
Another weird thing was that overnight, when I was having the crampy groin, I could make it virtually disappear the moment I got on my feet.
At one point in the middle of the night, struggling with the pain, I got out of bed and just stood for five minutes, feeling pretty normal.
But the moment I got back into bed, that groin discomfort returned.
Sitting up also relieved it quite a bit. On the third overnight, at around 4 AM, I decided to sleep the remaining three hours seated almost upright in a recliner – the only way to sleep without feeling that pain. And it worked. I slept soundly.
And that morning, it was off to urgent care where I was diagnosed with a UTI and prescribed an antibiotic as well as a drug to treat bladder spasm – which is what the nurse thought I had been experiencing.
The first night on the antibiotic and anti-spasm drug worked like a charm.
If you suspect a urinary tract infection, this needs to be treated immediately. If left untreated, the infection may spread to the kidneys.
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, fitness and cybersecurity topics for many years, having written thousands of articles for print magazines and websites, including as a ghostwriter. She’s also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
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