excercise... what are you doing?

[dejags]

To exercise or not?

As some of you may know I had a little spotting last week (I am only 5 weeks along) - it was very little and stopped within 30 minutes. This has left me feeling quite anxious but I still feel that exercise is important. I am not doing much exercise - just swimming 3 x week for 30 minutes which is just enough to keep me feeling alive.

The doctor has no problem with light exercise - but I am not enjoying it as much as I could because I am scared that I am risking my pregnancy?

I guess I am interested in what exercise you are doing/have done during this pregnancy and were there any ill-effects?

oooops cant spell exercise (in the title)... how embarrassing.....

I am and have been doing absolutely no excercise whatsoever - having never been pregnant before, was a bit unsure as to what i could and couldn't do as i never really done alot of excercise before falling pregnant either.

However, i am going to try and going swimming a couple of times a week and as the weather gets better do alot of walking - apart from this i don't really know what else to do. I am 14+1 so really need to get my finger out and not let myself turn into a lazy bloater

The first thing I did first pregnancy was type "Exercise and running" into a search engine...

I went jogging and cycling all the way through my pregnancies with no ill effects (well, did have to stop and wee in the hedges a lot towards the end whilst out running). I had spotting in the beginning with DS, too. The guidelines for exercise in pregnancy are very simple: avoid over-heating (this is the most important thing, by a huge margin), dehydration, strain on your joints, sunburn and feeling like cr*p afterwards; if it leaves you feeling awful, it's too much. So keep cool, warm up muscles, drink plenty, put on sun-screen in sunny places and stop before you feel tired.

Esp. after 12 weeks, I also think weight-lifting (may stretch too many internal things in opposing directions) and any activity that has high falling risks (like downhill skiing) are probably a bad idea.

I was in the pool at almost once a week when pregnant, too... but there was a study out... 2001? that reckoned that swimming pools give off a chlorine byproduct which may increase chances of miscarriage. So maybe you could vary your routine with a bit of walking, yoga, pilates, instead?

Yeah yeah yeah SC - That's a great excuse that!

I haven't done anything either. I do have a 15min walk to and from the trains station going to and coming hom from work 4 days a week..... so surely THAT counts???

I'm going to do some pelvic floor exercises this time....... HONEST! I did none last time and it's only been recently I don't have to cross my legs to sneeze.

Word of warning to you SC - The pelvic floor IS really important!! Don't neglect it as I did. I just though "oh for goodness sake I'm not going to pee myself after the baby is born! I'm young and fit!"..... Ooops How wrong I was.

AARRRGGGG - How do i do Pelvic Floor excercises then? ? ?
With a piss taking DP like mice i really do not want to be wetting myself

"like mine" that was meant to say!

I have done pilates and they were GREAT for my back, there are some classes that focused in pregnant women. You can get also a video on Pilates for pregnancy from Amazon, but couldn't express with words how boring it is...

I went to aqua aerobics until 2 weeks before I was due - I really enjoyed and the instructor was very good. There were only a few exercises I couldn't join in with.

Pelvic Floor Exercises... ahem. Can you stop and start yourself while weeing? Can you squeeze a tampon inside you? Once you get the hang of how that feels then you can build up to doing them whilst not weeing... You are supposed to do them for 6 repetitions, each 20-30 seconds long (yeah, right...)

One plus point: most men find it quite exciting if you can do it during love-making.

All together now girls...

and SSSQUEEEEEEEEEZE those pelvic floor muscles!

Does anyone else find that when they tense up the muscles they pull weird facial expressions??? I do! I can't do the exercises discretely, it looks like I'm sucking on lemons. lol.

I find I do them when I'm queueing for something; better than biting my nails or glaring at the slow staff.

I'm doing an antenatal yoga class - only been going a couple of weeks. Started off feeling very cynical but really do feel a lot better for a good few days after each class so I'm slowly being converted

If you do antenatal pilates you get to do pelvic floor exercises too. I can't recommend antenatal pilates too highly - it got me back into my jeans 3 months after having dd2, whereas before dd1 I was enormous and baggy for about a year. And I am, of course, about five times older than you lot!

If you don't have SPD, swim swim swim you lucky things (I still can't, dammit!)

Hiya, swimming is about the best thing you can do I beleive, all your joints are supported, whereas jogging for example puts a lot of pressure on your ligaments which soften a lot during pgcy!! I heard if you are not used to exercising do walking and gentle swimming to keep you feeling great! I swam 3 times a week first pgcy and I felt fab and didn't put on tons of weight either!
Good luck chuck!

I was a bit of an exercise nut before getting pregnant so the first thing I did was go and talk to a couple of the instructors at the gym to find out what guidelines they recommended.
I am now 29wks and try to do spinning 2-3, body pump 1 x week, I walk to the gym from work which is about 1.25miles (so that is 3-4 times a week)& I have just started swimming 1x a week on a Sunday.
Some of the guidelines I was given include hydration, overheating etc (as zebra said), from a weights point of view I don't ever lie flat and use slightly lighter weights then I was using previously. You also have to be careful of overhead movements.
I used a heart-rate monitor a lot prior to getting pregnant and was told not to let myself go over 60% of my maximum heart rate. There are calculations to work this out specifically but I have read guidelines that you shouldn't let your heart rate get over 140 beats per minute.
Hope this makes sense - Good luck.

There's a lot of sources I could cite that say the whole "limit your heart-rate to 60% of the max" is rubbish... but won't bother, since I think it applies to so few women, anyway! Simplest to just go with how you feel.

Agree that jogging can be hard on joints but plenty of good studies to show that if you're already used to it, and just keep going, it doesn't add any risks in pregnancy.

Very interesting to add that women who do get their heart rates to aerobic levels in pregnancy, seem to have a life-long benefit of increased VO2 max! (ie, better oxygen carrying capacity in the blood... I'm sure this has happened to me). Have much better stamina now than I did 5 years ago.

About the only 'risk' of exercise in pregnancy is that if you exercise aerobically (which does mean keeping the heart rate high), then the baby will probably have a lower birth-weight (about 1/2 lb). Follow-up studies on these babies are pretty limited, so far. But they seem to suggest that this lower birth weight results in lower life-long body fat in the baby and doesn't mean the babies are shorter, have lower IQs, or any of the negative outcomes that have otherwise been linked to lower birthweights.

ps, just to be responsible: I should add that any woman with a pregnancy that would already be classified as 'high risk' probably shouldn't exercise aerobically, and maybe not exercise at all (depends a lot on exactly what condition you have). But high risk means gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, maybe incompetent cervix, carrying multiples, and other conditions where it's indisputable you're what the medical profession would call 'high risk'.

I'm just over half way through this pregnancy and I've done no exercise at all I don't have the time or the energy.

I do however walk to work and home again, 20 minutes both ways. typical day for me is to get up and Walk dd to school in the morning(10-15 min depending on how fast we walk or how late we are, lol) then walk home(another 10-15 minutes home) then walk to work(20 minutes) then walk all around work, then walk home(20 minutes). I'd love one of those little machines that tells you how many miles you walk in a day. Since we don't drive and we're not on a bus route we have to walk so that is my exercise.

Didn't do any specific exercise in my last pregnancy either although I lived in town, so didn't have as far to go and I worked full time not part time like now, but I probably walked just as much last time as this time.

I've been doing gym 3-4 times a week, yoga once a week, swimming 1-2 a week for ages and intend to throughout pregnancy. However, been getting bad ms for a week now and it is a struggle to do anything. Not sure if should go with my body and stop until sickness passes or struggle through (I promised myself after last pregnancy, wouldn't let ms stop my exercise!) Have given up step class as gets me too boiling hot to be safe, I think.

Dinny - didn't have morning sickness but did find in the first couple of months that I felt a little nauseous straight after exercise (well did anytime my blood sugar got low). I found eating something straight away normally got me through this. Good luck!

Did lots of walking in my first pregnancy. Done diddly squat so far in this one (9 weeks ish).

I must admit that when I found I was pregnant, one of my first thoughts was 'Great, the perfect excuse to give up aerobics!' I'm now 37 weeks and find that aerobics and running (which I did as well) are things that I really, really miss. How sad is that
I do still walk a fair bit and go to ante-natal Yoga once a week - I do it at home as well every night as I find it really helps me sleep - if I don't do it, I wake up with aching legs. I also go swimming, or rather I go to the swimming pool - the ammount of actual swimming I do is debatable - and if you can cope with the embarassment of people seeing your whale-like shape as you rush from the changing room into the water, it's absolute bliss, as the water supports your weight. I would definitely recommend it.