WOMEN’S HEALTH
Maintaining a fitness regimen while pregnant.
When Jeniffer Masi, a geophysicist living in west Houston, found out she was pregnant early this year, she was faced with a quandary. She had always been active and knew regular exercise during pregnancy would be healthy for her and the baby, but she was recovering from a foot injury that had sidelined her for over a year.
When Masi talked to her doctor about resuming her workouts, he gave her the clearance but with a strong warning that she couldn’t expect to jump back into her workouts as if nothing had changed.
Although Masi had the motivation to start working out again, she knew she needed extra help from someone who knew how to modify workouts for pregnancy. “A lot of trainers don’t know how to do that,” Masi said.
So Masi reached out to a trainer, Cat Monzon, whom she knew from her days doing CrossFit, and set up a regular schedule of workouts. In addition to being certified as a prenatal and postpartum trainer, Monzon has the experience of having trained during her own pregnancies.
Staying active during pregnancy is important for the health of mothers and babies. Exercise can help prevent gestational diabetes, reduce labor time and lower the probability of needing a C-section. It can also boost mood and energy levels, help with sleep and reduce some of the aches and pains of pregnancy, such as backaches, constipation, bloating and swelling. For the baby, staying active helps promote a healthy birth weight, one that isn’t too high or too low.
But while all of this is well known, there is still a lot of confusion about what specific activities are safe.
“What I tell patients, in general, is that exercise in pregnancy is still safe to start, even if you were not exercising before,” said Dr. Patricia Lenihan, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth. For pregnant patients just beginning to exercise, Lenihan generally recommends low-impact activities such as walking, swimming and the stationary bike. “These are generally considered very safe for almost everybody,” Lenihan said.
Valerie Pedraza, a NICU nurse, doula and certified prenatal fitness trainer, also likes to recommend dancing, which is good for your hips. “Plus, it makes us happy and that also brings joy,” Pedraza said.
When it comes to specific recommendations, there still aren’t a whole lot of clear guidelines but rather some recommendations. Chief among them: Avoid vigorous exercise. For example, Lenihan steers away from giving exact numbers on what target heart rate her patients should aim for, as there’s still a lot of confusion on the subject. Instead, her advice is to aim for moderate exercise, during which talking is still comfortable, and to avoid any movements that cause discomfort.
For women who were already very active, it is generally considered safe to continue whatever fitness program they practiced before, although they will need to talk to their doctor first. They’ll also need to make modifications where necessary and to understand that their limitations will change during the course of their pregnancy. “Pregnancy is not the time to push the boundaries,” Lenihan said.
When Masi started working out with Monzon, she had to take it slow. Some days were better than others. On the bad days, when she didn’t have a lot of energy, she had to accept her body’s limitations, doing whatever she felt capable of.
“If your body’s telling you not to do something, just don’t do it, not while pregnant,” Masi said.
In the beginning, she lifted weights while seated. Then, once she felt a little stronger, she moved on to lifting lighter weights while standing.
Monzon is trained and certified through a program called BirthFit, which offers guidance on prenatal and postpartum fitness. For many of the prenatal and postpartum fitness programs, a key philosophy of the training is that it will help prepare women for the rigors of childbirth — the pain of early contractions and the intense effort of active labor — and early motherhood, or the “fourth trimester,” when the mother is recovering from the trauma of childbirth and dealing with fluctuating hormones, as well as cramping or bleeding. For women who had a C-section, which is a major abdominal surgery, their recovery will take longer.
“You need to be prepared,” Monzon said. “All of this pre-rehab and this training in a very specific and intentional way can only help on the postpartum side.”
Monzon’s prenatal training incorporates 60-90 second periods of work, followed by 60 seconds of rest, which is meant to mimic active labor. This pattern, which aims to help women build strength for a quick recovery, is seen in other prenatal fitness programs, such as PRONatal, through which Pedraza is certified, where this style of training is called “labor intensity interval training.”
As Masi’s pregnancy advances toward her due date in late October, she has found herself being able to do a little bit more each week. On the days she doesn’t have a workout with Monzon, she tries to go for a walk. Although there are days when she tires easily, she has found that, thanks to her workouts, she can last a little longer than expected. Meanwhile, she’s had a healthy pregnancy that has exceeded her doctor’s expectations.
“I can do more things now than I was able to do at the beginning of my pregnancy,” Masi said.