Heavy lifting job and pregnancy

[Carrottopppp]

I have recently found out I'm pregnant, still really early only 4 weeks and obviously don't want to put my pregnancy at risk of miscarriage so my main worry right now is my job. I work for a well known supermarket chain in their refrigerated distribution centre so not only do I have the weight of the products to deal with I also have the 0 degrees to deal with.

I pick products 8 hours a day 5 days a week and the weight can range from a 250g box to 18.1kg boxes/trays. Out of roughly 16 pallets a day I pick from maybe 4/5 of them are massively heavy products, trays of chicken weighing 12+kg, carrots weighing 16kg etc, some require me to pick on to dollies above head height and above head height at 16kg is hard work. Not only that we usually use electric power pallet trucks to pick the pallets up but most of the time I start my shift having to use a manual pump truck as the others are in short supply, bloody hard work having to dip and drive to get the thing going, and pulling is even harder especially when the pallet I've picked up has 60 boxes of 1ltr orange juices and each box contains 8 bottles 😥, taking heavy products off the pallet above head height usually results in me using my stomach to stop me dropping the tray due to the sheer weight of it and obviously I can't do that now so my question is, is heavy lifting still OK to do while pregnant, as its still early days I don't want to tell my boss yet, they won't be happy if I have to potentially let them down now we are getting busier in the run up to Xmas. I've read online that it should be okay if I'm used to doing this, who the hell gets used to picking extremely heavy products 😒 x

Yes, you're fine for a while :) Anything you're used to doing before you got pregnant is safe to keep doing now too, as long as you can listen to your body and take breaks when you need to. Same advice applies to exercise. But you should tell your work so they can do a risk assessment and you can get modifications and extra help if needed, doing that all day every day might be too much when you're tired and nauseous.

I work in a vineyard and it's harvest time now, and during harvest my job is to pick up crates of grapes onto the back of a tractor and then back off again, they average about 22kg but can be as heavy as 30kg. We generally pick around 60 crates in a day and our harvest is around 8-10 days over 2 months, so at least it's not daily. I'm a bit slower doing it, and getting more help at the other end unloading, but have been completely fine otherwise. Just makes me more tired in the evening!

Really not a problem if you are used to doing it and lift with good form. No heavy lifting is very outdated advise. Your body will let you know if you need to scale things back.

I was still doing 80kg deadlifts at 35+2wk without issues, that was 64% of pre-pregnancy. My squat took the biggest hit because of spd and was down at 50% (40kg). I cut down to 80% as soon as I got bfp and reduced it as needed, some lifts stayed up at 80%. I was back in the gym at 10wk post c-section and rebuilding my strength, 12wk pp now.

My toddler weighs 16kg and I have to lift and bloody carry their clingy self everywhere 😂 if you’re used to it, you’d be fine I’m sure. First pregnancy I’d be convinced that was too heavy and I’d damage myself! 🤣