exercise during pregnancy

[AnnaK]

Hi there!
I am just pregnant and quite scared for various reasons, one of which is weight gain. I have always struggled with my weight and the thought of being overweight afterwards... Very vain and selfish I know.
Anyway, I have been told I can carry on going to the gym as before but gently. Does anyone know about pilates during pregancy? I have recently bought some excellent videos and think it is a shame to stop because I was just beginning to see the benefits. I would really appreciate your views.

[motherinferior]

I did antenatal pilates - a proper class, with a teacher who was both qualified in pilates and tailoring it for pregnant women - and it was BRILLIANT. Have tummy muscles working - not brilliantly but working - 2 weeks after giving birth in sharp contrast to last time. Go for it!

[marsup]

Hello - in case anyone is still following this thread, I've been wondering about exercise myself.
I'm not really worried about weight (yet!) but I'm used to doing some exercise and I don't think I'd feel comfy stopping completely just because I'm pregnant - I used to get headaches and backaches when I didn't do any sport. So I've been going to the gym and using low-impact machines not jogging anymore. Feels fine to me! (and I'm sure Pilates would be too). My query is about stretching: my book says that you shouldn't do any stretching that works on the inner thigh muscles, but it doesn't explain why. There is one really nice sitting stretch (soles of feet together, knees as near to the ground as you can) that I find very pleasant after exercise but it is explicitly banned by my book. Does anyone know what is wrong with stretching your inner thigh muscles (gently)?

[pie]

I think the whole thing about stretching is that you produce relaxin when you are pregnant which softens and streches ligaments/muscles anyway. So you are much more likely to pull/injure yourself when you are pregnant than not.

HTH

[quackers]

Pilates is fab as long as it's adapted for pg women. Some of the exercises can put a strain on your back and need to be changed slightly.

[zebra]

What book do you have, Marsup?

[JanZ]

While I was pregnant, my Pilates teacher didn't let me do any exercises that involved "turn out" - I'd either not do them or do a variation in which I didn't turn my legs "out" at the hip joint.

It sounds like the stretch you are talking about would involve such a turn out (I like a similar one, which you do on your back, with knees and legs raised and let gravity "drop" your knees and increase the stretch).

As well as the risk of the relaxin allowing you to "over" stretch, is there a specific risk here with the pelvis and causing/exacerbating SPD?

[Lindy]

I've always been under the impression that it is fine to keep exercising during pregnancy - if you are used to exercise - (avoid skiing and horseriding!); I keep going with low impact aerobics, swimming, youga & walking during my pregancy and was glad that I did.

My problem came after DS was born, all my good intentions to keep exercising went out the window so my advice would be to try & think how you can structure exercise in with a young baby - otherwise you might end up like me, over 2 years later still with an excess 3 stone!

[Oakmaiden]

JanZ - I expect that that is the reason behind it. When swimming you are advised not to do breaststroke legs for the same reason.

[Tillysmummy]

I highly recommend swimming. In my last pregnancy it helped no end and also Im sure helped my labour. This pg I am also swimming.

[LucieB]

Ok - I was training at least once a day prior to discovering I was pg last time. Because I conceived whilst on the pill, and was paranoid about damage to the baby, I laid off exercise from 8-14 weeks. Then I started going to the gym about 3 times a week right up to about 33 weeks when I went on leave and started to swim. I would recommend using a heart rate monitor when doing aerobic exercise and ask the gym staff which weights machines you should steer clear of. I stuck mostly to the cross trainer, the bike and weights as I got bigger. Running isn't a good idea after a certain stage. Other than that, I can wholeheartedly recommend exercising during pregnancy. Although it doesn't necessarily guarantee you a straighforward birth (I had a long labour), it gives you stamina and it certainly helped me recover quickly afterwards. This time, I am trying to get to the gym when I can. But with working and having a 10 month old, time is a lot less plentiful!

[zebra]

Except that chloroform (the horrible smell of swimming pools) is believed to promote miscarriage.

And there's poor science behind the ancient advice about women needing to limit their heart-rate during pregnancy.

-Z (who seems to enjoy throwing spanners in the works, and went running all the way to 39 weeks in 2 pregnancies)

[LucieB]

I used the heart rate monitor for the simple reason that I had always trained to exhaustion for my sport, and was told that doing that during pregnancy was not a good idea. I only went swimming towards the end of my pg, and it certainly helped me to relax and feel comfortable. My ds was very long and liked to kick my ribs a lot!
Best of luck - at the end of the day, you should do what you feel comfortable doing....

[zebra]

Ah yes, little feet wedged in my ribs. I remember it well!! I could almost count his toes.

[motherinferior]

Zebra, it's chlorine not chloroform!

(says jealous woman who couldn't swim on account of SPD, and is LONGING to get back in the water...)

[zebra]

I'm 99% sure chlorine is odourless, totally inoffensive. But when it reacts with organic materials (bacteria, human skin, sweat, etc.) it forms the smelly, somewhat toxic gas (I think it's chloroform). And that same gas is implicated in lung damage. There was that recent study that the gas might be damaging enough to promote asthma in young children.

[tinyfeet]

AnnaK, I believe I read somewhere that Liz Hurley and Madonna both did Pilates through their pregnancies, and just look how fabulous they both looked after giving birth! I think Pilates is in the same class as Yoga, and therefore gentle and good for pregnant women. Swimming also great. I think it is not advised to do aerobics or jogging. I feel the same way you do, and am continuing to do slow machines (gliders and bicycle) to try to gain less weight with this pregnancy.

[happyspider]

I did aquareobic up until the day before ds was born and felt fantastic for it.
I still went to the gym until 36 weeks pg and was wearing a heart rate monitor, you cannot go above 140 or you will harm the baby.
I was told that it is safest to exercise from week 18 till the end as the first trimester is quite tricky and you should avoid anything that would endanger the baby.

I am now not exercising because I am looking after my baby :-) so my advice is to go for it now as you will have to stop (for a while...) when he/she is out....

[morocco]

belly dancing? It's great fun and you get to wiggle your pelvis a lot

[marsup]

Zebra, my book is What to expect when you're expecting. It is not very detailed on exercise, and downright worrying about a few other things (very dogmatic about how much weight one should put on when, for example). Ok otherwise, and I'm a first-timer so I need something to go by.

JanZ excuse complete ignorance - what is SPD? I am going to consult that book again as soon as I get home from work today!

Oakmaiden, is it true, no breaststroke? Oh no! that's the only swimming I really like, and I was hoping to do some later on in pregnancy. Is it ok afterwards though, or do you stay vulnerable to this SPD thing for a while?

And what is this business of measuring your heart rate and keeping within certain limits? What are the recommended limits? (one could get very paranoid with all these recommendations, but I guess it's better to know)

[LucieB]

Marsup - my husband was my coach when I was training full-time and he is also a doctor. He told me to keep my heart rate below 140 when doing aerobic exercise and never to train to exhaustion. Its also important to keep well-hydrated and to warm up and warm down. I agree with you about that book - it says some odd things.....
At the end of the day, exercise is good for you whilst pregnant so enjoy it and do as much as you feel comfortable with, whilst heeding guidelines re weights to avoid etc...
HTH

[LucieB]

..sorry, didn't make it clear - was given that advice when pregnant! Wouldn't normally keep my heart-rate to 140 when training!!!

[JanZ]

I can't remember exactly what SPD stands for - something like Symphasis pubic disfunction, ie the ligaments that hold the pelvis together start to give way, so it starts separating and can be very painful. It can helped with a special belt. I never suffered from it and it's not inevitable, but a few here have had it during pregnancy - Pie is suffering from it badly at the moment.

Breast stroke is the only swimming stroke I can do - so when I went swimming I used strong arms and a "mini" leg action, trying to make it more of a doggie paddle (but every so often forgetting!).

The advice re exercise in the first versus the second trimester is contradictory: some say it doesn't matter so much during the first trimester - just to listen to your body, and anyway, the baby is protected by the pubic bone if you were to fall. If you're going to miscarry, it'll happen anyway - it won't be casued by the exercise.

I even went skiing when I was pregnant with ds (weeks 10 and 11) - I was with two GPs (my best friend and her dh, parents of 4) who were happy with what I was doing (and so was my own GP). I made sure to ski well within myself - and probably put myself most at risk when I was helping their kids learn to ski and supporting their (then) 7 year old dd with my own (deeper than ususal) snow plough!

I think the key is: continue to do what you've done before, but be sensible (eg heart rate etc), but if you want to start something new, check with your GP and make sure your instructor is properly aware of your "status".

The advice from Amercian books/web sites is stricter - ie NO sking, running, cycling, but I suspect that is because they are so scared of litigation.

[donnie]

i exercised regularly: I swam the same distances unless I was too tired and I did all the same things in the gym, except no sit ups, nothing to pull the tummy, and substituted running on the treadmill with a good walk, sometimes on an incline. I didn't know that you were supposed to maintain a max heart rate though, none of the instructors mentioned that one !.

[zebra]

The What to Expect book on Pregnancy has been panned all over the Internet; just do a search for "Pregnancy book I found most rubbish" or along those lines.

The advice about limiting heartrate during exercise is obsolete & really annoys me. The idea is to prevent aerobic exercise -- basically, anything that gets you feeling like you're working hard. The ideas behind preggos not doing aerobic exercise, I'm pretty sure, are based on 1930s-1950s studies of what happens to physiology during aerobic exercise. It was observed that during aerobic exercise blood gets diverted from internal organs to muscles. Therefore must be bad for pregnant women, right??

EXCEPT, the studies were done on college-age young men. And laboratory animals. Neither of which describes pregnant women. The actual epidemiological studies show positive outcomes for all women who continue with aerobic exercise during pregnancy, with one exception. The babies of exercisers tend to be smaller, by about 1/2 lb on average. And higher birthweights, while tending to mean more complicated births, also seem to lead to more clever, more sexually successful, more emotionally happy adults (if you believe clinical studies relating birth weight to these things). However, one study suggested that the birthweight difference has to do with body fat, rather than height. And that these children may have a life-long, inbuilt programming to tend to carry less body fat than is average in the population. Sounds like a good thing with obesity almost epidemic...

OBVIOUSLY, a PG woman should only exercise within comfortable zones and go for a cautious idea of what feels ok rather than pushing her limits. But if you know you can trust yourself to stop when you feel too tired, then ignore the heartrate stuff.

Quick REFs, not all of equal quality:

Positive body image .
General info .
More detailed Info .
Benefits, but also when Exercise may be contra-indicated for PG women .

[LucieB]

Zebra
Agree with what you are saying. But, for me, a mental exerciser, using a heart-rate monitor helped to convince me to not push it too hard. When I was competing, I would regularly puke/feel dizzy after doing my aerobic exercise which isn't good when pg. Having said that, I never used a heart-rate monitor when training pre-pregnancy!
As for the debate as to whether training using heart-rate measurements is effective, well, thats another subject, I reckon!
What is your sport Zebra?