is it normal for a heavily pregnant woman to be able to walk 12 miles?

[mum0ftw0]

or is that an unreasonable expectation?

Dylthan don't start slagging off the OP and pretext it with "I haven't read the OP" FFS

@altinkum. Even 3 hours for 12 miles is really going for it. Normal walking pace for a healthy adult is 3 miles an hour: I know a lot of keen mountain walkers in peak physical condition and none of them count on doing more than 3 miles an hour on the flat without power walking.

You have an incredibly fast natural walk - good for you, but it's really exceptional to walk that fast, pregnant or not.

I am very fit, and could probably have managed a 3-4 hour walk until around 7 months each time, but I accept most couldn't.

We did around a 6+ mile walk (more that 2 hours, DH was carrying DD aged 2 in a rucksack) when I was around 8 months pregnant with DS1 and I remember that:

a) I had Braxton Hicks every 10 mins because of the effort
b) I needed the toilet every 30 mins
c) It became uncomfortable in my hips.

FWIW though, 12 miles in 2 hours is RUNNING - at 6 miles per hour (reasonably fast running). I could cover it now (not pregnant and superfit) but I bet that most people in the UK couldn't. Even though I was fit in pregnancy I couldn't have done this, even at the start. I can only do it now as I am training for a duathlon.

hobnob not this op the original thread that started this all off there has been no link to it on this thread and I can't be arsed to go searching for it.

Altikum has been quoted on this thread as saying any pg women who can't walk 12 miles in 2hrs (later corrected to 3) needs to be address there fitness levels.

I just wanted to know if it was an accurate quote.

I think someone needs to reassess their maths levels, not their fitness levels.

The strain on the joints would be the reason not to do it.

Ok, have now seen 3 hours, and still think unrealistic for all but the superfit pregnant person. Even 4 miles an hour is a very brisk pace.

And although most pregnant women should be able to cover the 12 miles in 4 hours (with say an hour break in the middle), for many it will not be about fitness but about comfort.

I swam 60 lengths (around a mile) the day I went into labour with DS2 and used the gym until 8 months (and was running on treadmill until 7 months) and would have cried at the idea of a 12 mile walk in 3 hours.

Very different walking 1 mile in 15 mins to walking 12 of them!

altinkum very few pregnant woman (after 6-7 months) could walk 12 miles in 3 hours. Some fit ones could walk 12 miles in 4 hours with an hour in the middle for lunch.

@altinkum. ahhh: your post at 7h50 suddenly makes you look a lot more reasonable.

Seems the problem is that your original post on the other thread didn't say what you meant it to say - if it's been accurately reported, then you said that any pregnant woman who couldn't do 12 miles in 3 hours has a problem, even if that's not what you meant to say. And obviously, that has got people's backs up, because it's just not true...

Maybe you clarified that earlier and it didn't get noticed, in which case sorry.

Of course it's not impossible, would probably have been quite normal years ago before we all bloody drove everywhere.

Very odd now that to be pretty fit is the exception not the norm.

I did a roughly 13 mile walk every Sunday while pg, as we do every Sunday we are not away. With both pgs I did it right up to birth. I also did 6 hours of karate a week until 8 months when I just got too big.

If your body is used to exercise and you just keep going throughout your pregnacy everything continues to work.

If you are already unfit or you give up exercise then I imagine it may seem impossible.

If it's pissing you off so much get HQ to delete the thread FFS.

You both sound like children, typical example of playgroud behaviour.

blimey did a long walk when 40 weeks with ds2,in laws wanted to walk there and back to save on bus fare,took me ages and that was only a couple of miles,they moaned when i couldnt keep up,turned out i had an 11lb baby inside me :/ stuff walking 12 miles!
with twins i had to stop after a few yards!

Just hide the thread then!

Surely it's not worth getting this het up over? Just bloody ignore her.

I think I could do 12 miles now in my non-pregnant state. I sometimes walk six miles total to get to and back from the big out-of-town supermarket, plus milage for actually slogging around the shop when I get there.

Not sure how long it would take me to do the 12 miles, but I would probably be very grumpy at the end of it.

However, I remember walking 0.6 miles at 34 weeks with the twins because I had to (there was no bus route), and it was on that (astoundingly hard) walk that the contractions of premature labour began.

Of course, I was never going to stay pregnant much longer, but I'll always wonder how much longer I would have lasted if it wasn't for that walk.

Should I be walking to the hospital for my appointments then? I'm not sure I could get child care for that long tbh. I think walking there and back would kill me with my sciatica tbh but then I am a complete fuck up,incapable of everything. The hospital it 2hrs away by bus btw.

"Of course it's not impossible, would probably have been quite normal years ago before we all bloody drove everywhere."

I'm sure it has never been "normal" for women in late pregnancy to walk 12 miles. 12 miles is a long way. At normal walking speed it will take 4 hours. When heavily pregnant, probably more than 4 hours, maybe much more. In the late stages of pregnancy in our society it has been usual for people to help heavily pregnant women. Their other children, husband, other relatives. There is nothing wrong with that. Women are more isolated from their traditional support networks than ever before, let's not forget that.

Plus, at late pregnancy your joints go all wobbly and your centre of balance shifts. Your ligaments loosen ready for birth meaning that joints have more movement in sockets. To suggest that it was ever "normal" for women in this state to walk 12 miles and that the reason they don't do so now is because they are lazy is ridiculous.

I didn't say women are 'lazy', but as a culture I think think we do far less than we used to.

I don't think a four hour walk is very long, I, my family, lots of my friends are all keen walkers, four hours is a jaunt with the dogs.

Eight hours is a good long walk.

I am not implying that this should be seen as the norm, or critizing anyone else for not fancying it, but you are wrong if you think it is beyond the scope of a fit healthy woman - who wishes to do it -, at any stage of her pregnancy.

Styles was what did it for me. All that bloody leg splaying not good for the old pubic-symphisis.

Wildy, I see your pregnancy karate and raise you pregnant archery.
[poker face]

How does anyone - pregnant or not - have time to walk for three hours? Or four? Or EIGHT?! If I had all that spare time I definitely wouldn't be spending it walking. (Naturally, I would spend it doing housework and batch cooking, not lying on the sofa. Oh no. Not me.)

WTWTA you said that before cars became so commonplace it would have been normal for pregnant (the OP speaks of heavily pregnant) women to walk 12 miles. My mum was pregnant in the 70s without access to a car and she certainly wasn't "normally" doing 12 mile walks or anything like that. Her work was not 6 miles away, or 12, and nor were the shops. It was not "normal" for her to need to walk this distance for anything.

My work was 15 miles away with my first pregnancy. At a normal walking speed this would have taken me 5 hours. I would not think it usual or common for a person to walk 4 or 5 hours to work, I would've needed to leave at 4am and wouldn't have got home until 9pm. This is not "normal". Before public transport people used to live near to where they worked. This type of walking commute has never been the case for all but a very few people.

And doing it when heavily pregnant as a matter of course? No! Why would they be doing it? When my mum was pregnant women gave up work quite early, before those days certainly women worked very hard on farms and in homes and factories but none of these things involved a monster walk there are back when heavily pregnant.

I don't understand this time when you imagine all these heavily pregnant women were walking these distances as a normal part of life. Or why it would be desirable that they should have to do so. In parts of the world where they do have to do so, it is not seen as desirable, surely.

You talk about walking for pleasure. That is an entirely different thing to saying that is was normal for heavily pregnant women to walk 12 miles as a normal part of their life - I just don't think that's true.

wow is this thread still going
all because the op felt she shouldn't have to fold a buggy on a bus for a wheelchair.

Slubber when the feck are you doing in AIBU? You are supposed to be strictly camping, get back there I have a story for you

Come to that, what the feck am I doing in AIBU?