Fit, Strong & Pregnant

By Joy Able

Are you planning to have a baby or are you already pregnant...?

This book can help you minimize pain and discomfort during your pregnancy and enhance your recovery after wards. Specific exercises will improve posture, pelvic floor muscle strength and minimize low back pain.

Benefits of exercise during pregnancy....
Increased cardiovascular fitness, muscular strength and flexibility

Women who exercise during pregnancy experience fewer prenatal discomforts, such as constipation, swollen limbs and leg cramps

Exercise can help to prevent or control gestational diabetes and help prevent things such as incontinence and hypertension

Improves posture and body mechanics, facilitates circulation, reduces pelvic and rectal pressure whilst increasing energy levels

During pregnancy it is extremely important to correct muscular imbalances through stretching and strengthening exercise therapy

Increased fatigue threshold and reduced emotional shifts

Increased fitness

Lower incidence of excessive weight gain, enhanced psychological well being, increasing confidence in changing body image

Labor and delivery

Women who exercise experience less problematic deliveries with a higher rate of uncomplicated, spontaneous deliveries and active labor.

Recovery
Women that exercise retain less weight and score higher on measures of maternal adaptation, experience fewer incidences of post-natal depression returning faster to “normal” living due to greater energy reserves.

Back care in pregnancy
The back and pelvis are vulnerable during pregnancy; they need special consideration when sitting, standing, lifting, bending and moving.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joy Able
• Release date: Feb 20, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458032799

Joy Able

Qualified exercise physiologist working in elite sports, strength & conditioning and exercise rehabilitation. Total understanding of the changes the women's body goes through as a result of pregnancy this book has been developed with the sole intention of assisting both mother and baby through pregnancy, birth and post-natal periods. Personally worked with hundreds of women looking to achieve better health outcomes during pregnancy aiding in faster recovery times returning to activities of daily living quicker, with less discomfort.

Book preview

Pregnancy and Exercise Quiz

1. Which forms of exercise are generally recommended for pregnant women?

A Horse riding, roller skating, netball, and squash

B Aquanatal classes, light weight training, stationary cycling, walking, pregnancy yoga and Pilates

C Avoid exercising during pregnancy

2. How many times per week should you exercise?

A 2–3 times per week

B Once a week

C 4–6 times per week

3. How hard or intense should you exercise when pregnant?

A Mild – Heart Rate below 80 beats per minute

B Moderate – Heart Rate between 120–140 beats per minute

C Vigorous – Heart Rate between 140–180 beats per minute

D Extreme – Heart Rates above 180 beats per minute

4. Pelvic floor exercises are very important; how are they performed?

A By performing sit ups or crunches

B Sitting with your legs crossed

C Deep squats sticking out your bottom

D By squeezing and relaxing the muscles that control the flow of urine and feces (poo), sucking up not pushing down

5. Why are pregnant women cautioned against saunas, hot spas and heavy sweating?

A higher body temperature can harm the developing baby

B Heat causes the placenta to grow abnormally

C Hotter body temperatures can cause gestational diabetes

6. What should you do if you are sick or do not feel like exercising?

A Push through it and exercise anyway

B Listen to your body and relax, take it easy

C Exercise more to sweat out the illness

7. How can you strengthen the abdominal muscles during pregnancy?

A Lie on your back and do sit ups

B Without drawing your belly button in or pushing your tummy out, squeeze and contract your tummy muscles, hold for 5–10 seconds and repeat

C Lie on your back with your hands palms down and perform 6-inch leg raises

8. Why should you avoid exercises lying on your back after the first trimester?

A The weight of your baby and uterus can compress a main artery or vein

B You may be unable to get back up

C The weight of your baby pushing on your bladder may cause incontinence

Introduction

The most important person in a baby’s health and development is the mother. Many decisions a mother makes prior to, during and after pregnancy directly affect their child. Decisions to continue to smoke cigarettes, to drink alcohol, about the types of food consumed, or to exercise regularly, may directly influence the development of the embryo – fetus and child. Maternal exercise is an issue that is presently receiving more attention. Consequently, the mother’s physical, social and emotional health is essential for these same developing issues. Taking this into consideration, motherhood begins well before conception, incorporating exercise, sound nutrition and a generally healthy lifestyle. The ideal outcome is a labor at term without preventable interventions, the delivery of a happy and healthy baby, with a healthy post-birth period that supports the physical and emotional needs of the mother and baby.

Specific Benefits of Exercise Related to Pregnancy

* May help prevent the onset and control of gestational or pregnancy induced diabetes

* Improve posture, help blood flow and reduce pelvic and rectal pressures

* Increase energy levels (especially important during labor)

* Improve mood and sleep

* Reduce prenatal discomforts such as constipation, swollen limbs and leg cramps

* Increase placenta development, to increase the capacity to exchange

nutrients and waste products with the developing fetus

* Reduce emotional shifts

* May help prevent incontinence

* May help prevent the onset of, or control of pregnancy-induced high blood pressure

* Aid in quicker postpartum recovery

Being physically active poses numerous benefits including improvements in psychological, social and emotional well being, and physical health. The general benefits of exercise include improved heart-lung fitness, muscle strength and flexibility, prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and increased delivery of nutrient-rich blood around the body. Healthy women with uncomplicated pregnancies need not limit their exercise, although extreme training is discouraged.

Specific Exercise Benefits for Women

* Maintain or improve bone health, preventing osteoporosis

* Maintain a healthy weight range

* Reduce menopause symptoms, including hot flushes

* May also help lower the risk of certain forms of cancer

* Increase muscle tissue enhancing metabolic rate

* Reduce amount of body fat and improve body composition

Healthy, active women are positive role models and are more likely to pass on healthy lifestyles to their children. Given the rapid rise in diabetes and obesity, becoming a positive role model for a healthy lifestyle is essential to your child’s social, emotional, and physical health. Healthy active women also give birth to leaner, stronger, healthier babies, who may even have better co-ordination and heart-lung fitness as adults.

Exercise Benefits for Labor and Delivery

* Decrease first and second stages of labour

* Enhance pain tolerance

* Increase stamina/endurance for labour and delivery

* May reduce need for caesarean birth

* Improved pelvic muscle tone may also reduce vaginal tearing

Wow, pretty mind blowing isn’t it? Probably one of the most important things you can do for the benefit of you and your child does not have to cost anything. All these wonderful benefits may be achieved by simply being more physically active.

Our guide to exercise will provide you with simple-to-follow guidelines for women preparing for pregnancy, during pregnancy, and after pregnancy.

Exercise Benefits for the Developing Baby

* Decrease body fat for up to five years

* Improve stress tolerance

* Advance behaviour patterns

Benefits you may obtain from this Book

Currently there seem to be many misconceptions that so-called experts out there are offering regarding exercise and pregnancy, and telling people what they believe is better than another is. But who is to say which one may be more effective – free weights, yoga, water aerobics, dancing, pregnancy exercise classes, etc. The information presented in this book is supported by scientifically validated research, formulated around the ongoing postural changes underlying pregnancy, physical activity, and maintenance of health and fitness, for women and pregnancy.

The information presented in this book has been collated though the treatment of hundreds of pregnant women who have had numerous questions about exercise and pregnancy.

This guide to exercise and pregnancy will become a vital tool for women and fitness professionals who wish to manage their health or the health of their clients throughout pregnancy.

How you can use this Book

Everybody who reads this book will, no doubt, use it differently. Our intention is that before commencing an exercise program you will consult your physician and read this book to develop an understanding of what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. Chapters four to seven detail how you may organize your exercise program and may be one tool that provides you with the knowledge you need to achieve a labor at term without preventable interventions, with the delivery of a happy and healthy infant and a healthy post-birth period that supports the physical and emotional needs of the mother, infant and family.

Follow our guidelines regarding heart-lung fitness, muscle strengthening and flexibility, and you are on your way to a healthier, stronger, more flexible mother’s body.

Chapter 1: Pregnancy Overview

Pregnancy spans on average about 10 lunar months, 9 calendar months, or 40 weeks, and the processes that characterize this period of life affect your child’s postnatal growth and development. The prenatal period is divided into three: the egg, the embryo, and the fetus.

The First Trimester

First 12 Weeks of Fetal Life

The first trimester of pregnancy is an exciting and yet scary time. You are bursting with good news and morning sickness. The body begins to accommodate the developing fetus by increasing the amount of blood pumped by the heart, further increases in heart and breathing rates are due to the increased demands for oxygen by the fetus. Hormonal actions are enhanced resulting in heavier breasts, increased fatty deposits and growing milk ducts.

During this time, the uterus is enlarging and whilst still low in the pelvis, the uterus will increasingly press against your bladder. It begins to thicken until it has become solid causing a variety of symptoms, including nausea, fatigue, breast tenderness and frequent urination. Whilst these are common symptoms of pregnancy, every woman has a different experience. While some may experience an increase in energy, others may feel very tired and emotional. Unfortunately, morning sickness does not discriminate and while you may have it, others may not.

Contrary to what you may have been told, during this phase you are not eating for two and experts recommend that, for the first trimester, your eating should remain about the same as it was prior to the pregnancy.

Note: Pregnancy exercises for this trimester are located in Chapter 6.

The Second Trimester

Until Week 28

The second trimester of pregnancy is a fun time! Feeling your baby move, starting to wear maternity clothes and, of course, the end of morning sickness makes this a very special time. During this period, you may experience a new set of feelings like back or abdominal pain, leg cramps, constipation or heartburn. Exercise during this time remains important as movement has shown to help reduce these feelings and may assist in minimizing discomfort.

It is also the time of a lot of prenatal testing and growing questions about birth and parenting. You will probably hear your baby’s heartbeat for the first time at around 12 weeks. An ultrasound typically is performed around 19 weeks – somewhere between 16–20 weeks; you may feel your baby’s first fluttering movements.

During the second and third trimesters, energy requirements increase by about 600kj a day. Increasing fruit intake to four serves each day (from the recommended two serves for non-pregnant women) is one way to provide all the extra energy you need as you continue your happy and