As a 39-year-old first-time mother, Nicole Nelson expected to feel some discomfort after childbirth.

But the pain in her left buttock and side continued for months after her daughter was born in May 2009. She needed a soft ring to sit. She had trouble climbing stairs. And getting into a car was "excruciating."

Now — almost six years after the birth, a B.C. Supreme Court judge has pinpointed the cause of the damage: a nurse who dropped Nelson's leg from a birthing bar during the delivery, injuring the Lower Mainland woman's hip.

Justice Richard Johnston has awarded Nelson $1.1 million for her suffering.

"Nelson's quality of life is substantially impaired by her left hip pain," Johnston wrote.

"She is unable to fully participate in raising her daughter, particularly when it comes to participating in recreational or sporting activities. Her ability to care for her home is also affected."

The ski or waterski position

The award follows a battle to determine exactly what happened during the early morning hours while Nelson was giving birth at B.C. Women's Hospital and Health Centre.

Nelson claimed she received an epidural in what is "called a ski or waterski position" when the injury occurred: sitting in an elevated bed with her feet on foot pedals in a position that looks like a ski stance.

A birthing bar arched from one side of the bed to the other. Her husband and a nurse were with her.

Between contractions, Nelson claimed the nurse and her husband placed her feet on top of the birthing bar to rest and stretch her legs.

But she said the nurse "let go of her left leg and turned to do something, and her left leg fell off the birthing bar."

Because she was on an epidural, Nelson said she didn't feel anything and took little notice of the incident. But she recalled it in the months and years that followed as a possible cause of injury.

The nurse had no recollection of the delivery or Nelson. But she "testified that she had never placed a patient's feet or ankles on top of a birthing bar, and has never seen it done."

Nurse vs. patient

Johnston found that the case turned on credibility.

The hospital questioned the accuracy of Nelson's recollection of events, but the judge found she never complained of hip pain prior to childbirth.

Doctors concluded a likely cause of the pain was a torn labrum: a tearing in the cartilage which helps hold the head of the thigh bone in the hip socket.

Johnston said that the testimony of Nelson's husband was particularly important to establish what actually happened.

While he didn't see the nurse let go of his wife's left leg, he claimed she did put it on the birthing bar, because he copied her with the right leg.

"If he had been prepared to fabricate this evidence to help his wife, there is no apparent reason he would not go further, to claim he saw the leg-drop incident itself, but he did not," Johnston wrote.

The $1.1-million award was for a combination of damages and the loss of past and future income.

A doctor said Nelson will most likely require hip replacement surgery.