There is a common misconception that exercise during pregnancy is unsafe. Fortunately, if you are healthy and your pregnancy is normal, it is safe to continue or start most types of exercise.
Why Be Active During Pregnancy?
Regular exercise during pregnancy benefits you and your baby in these key ways:
- Reduces back pain
- Eases constipation
- May decrease your risk of gestational diabetes, preeclampsia (high blood pressure during pregnancy), and cesarean delivery
- Promotes healthy weight gain during pregnancy
- Improves your overall general fitness and strengthens your heart and blood vessels
- Helps you to lose the baby weight after your baby is born
And benefits continue in the postpartum period: exercising after your baby is born may help improve mood and decreases the risk of deep vein thrombosis, a condition that can occur more frequently in women in the weeks after childbirth.
What Are The Best Choices For Physical Activity During Pregnancy?
The following activities are a few great ways to stay safely active for most healthy pregnant women:
- Walking: Brisk walking gives a total body workout and is easy on the joints and muscles.
- Swimming and water workouts: If you find brisk walking difficult because of low back pain, water exercise is a good way to stay active.
- Stationary Bicycling: Because your growing belly can affect your balance and make you more prone to falls, riding a standard bicycle during pregnancy can be risky. Cycling on a stationary bike is a better choice.
- Modified Yoga and Modified Pilates: Yoga reduces stress, improves flexibility, and encourages stretching and focused breathing. There are even classes designed especially for pregnant women! If taking a regular class, or doing yoga on your own, avoid poses that require you to be still or lie on your back for long periods.
When Is Exercise Unsafe During Pregnancy?
Women with the following conditions or pregnancy complications (which your doctor will tell you about) should not exercise during pregnancy:
- Certain types of heart and lung diseases
- Cervical insufficiency
- Being pregnant with twins or triplets (or more) with risk factors for preterm labor
- Placenta previa after 26 weeks of pregnancy
- Preterm labor or ruptured membranes (your water has broken) during this pregnancy
- Preeclampsia or pregnancy-induced high blood pressure
- Severe anemia
Physical activity does not increase your risk of miscarriage, low birth weight, or early delivery – unless you have any of the above conditions. In a healthy pregnancy, being active is a good thing.
Working With A Health Coach
Before you begin, check with your ob/gyn to make sure exercise is safe for you. If you are having trouble sticking to your exercise goals, or want help in designing an exercise program that is right for you, you may consider working with a health coach. Reply Ob/Gyn & Fertility Health Coach Emily Kennedy has helped many of our patients achieve their health goals. Emily suggests the following tips for pregnancy workouts:
- Drink plenty of water before, during, and after your workout.
- Wear a sports bra that gives lots of support to help protect your back. Later in pregnancy, a belly support belt may reduce discomfort while walking or running.
- Avoid becoming overheated. Wear loose-fitting clothing, and exercise in a temperature-controlled room. Do not exercise outside when it is very hot or humid.
- Keep moving! To ensure adequate blood flow to your uterus, avoid standing still or lying flat on your back as much as possible.
“Expect your workout to feel different during pregnancy,” Emily advises. “Your balance, breathing and coordination are all different. So tune in, and go easy!”
Reply Fertility Urges Restorative Reproductive Medicine for All Patients Facing Infertility
“After over a year of trying and a miscarriage, it just felt like there was no hope and no way out of this situation. It seemed like there was no solution, that I would always be sick, and that we would never get to hold any of our children in this life.”
Two things struck me during reflections surrounding 2024 “National Infertility Awareness Week”:
Why don’t more couples know about restorative reproductive medicine? By Amanda Naramore, APRN Most women have never heard the words Restorative Reproductive Medicine but many of the 13% of women struggling with infertility(1) do often ask themselves very important questions: Why hasn’t my doctor offered natural way to achieve pregnancy that cooperates with my reproductive system? or Why aren't my doctors working to explain my "unexplained infertility?" These are appropriate questions, but unfortunately they are not answered because most medical providers have never heard of RRM or fertility awareness charting.(2) Restorative reproductive medicine is a growing practice that has helped countless women restore their reproductive health. The International Institute of Reproductive Medicine defines RRM as a “medical discipline that identifies and treats the root cause of reproductive problems, aiming to treat, optimize and restore the patient’s health"(4). Most medical schools offering OBGYN residency programs do not teach students about RRM or even introduce them to the possibility of its existence (2). As a graduate of a women’s health nurse practitioner program, I was never exposed to the notion of health restoration. The curriculum identified the female medical abnormalities and went directly to treatment with birth control or in the case of infertility, referral to artificial reproductive technology (ART). There were no natural alternatives to treatment discussed or suggested. In fact, infertility is often referred to as a disease state instead of a symptom of a bigger problem. The lack of exposure a medical student or OB/GYN resident receives to RRM and fertility awareness charting will directly affect their ability to offer a positive alternative to ART. Providers simply do not know there is an entire medical community devoted to a unique fertility restoration approach. This knowledge deficit leaves many women frustrated with their options to improve their fertility and even suspicious of the medical community. Medical providers can also become discouraged. It seems like such a glaring inadequacy in medicine, yet the answer has been available for over 20 years. Here at Reply, we utilize RRM not only to repair the couple’s overall health and optimize their fertility but also to teach them about the female’s reproductive system by utilizing fertility awareness charting. This practice is backed by years of medical research and evidence-based medicine. RRM has excellent success rates in achieving pregnancy, especially in cases where IVF has failed, and women were of advanced reproductive age.(3) Another reassuring fact is that the RRM success rates for pregnancy are comparable to ART, excluding the use of donor eggs.(4) Our Reply team is working to educate couples about a healthier and more natural alternative to ART. We feel this approach respects the couple, as it helps them optimize their health while trying to conceive a healthy pregnancy.
”Not until I found Reply, did I feel confident that I would ever have a child of my own.” Watch to learn how the Reply Fertility “Finding and Fixing” Program helped Pamela to address her PCOS, to conceive, and to have a happy and healthy pregnancy.
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