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Pregnancy fitness
Pregnancy fitness becomes a vital priority not just for yourself but also for your new baby. Regardless of your state of fitness when you get pregnant, trying to maintain a reasonable state of fitness throughout your 40 or so weeks. General fitness can help prevent or minimize some of the complications that pregnancy can bring.
All women who have carried a pregnancy to term and not maintained a minimal level of general fitness will attest to the enormous uphill struggle of trying to regain fitness once it has lapsed. Once your baby is born, your life and routines change considerably and the challenge of introducing a new routine on top of everything else can be insurmountable for some women.
If you are unfit when you get pregnant, just walking briskly for 30 minutes everyday will be a good pattern to establish, one that will be easy to maintain with a new baby. If you are a gym junkie, you could continue and make use of the creche if your gym has one.
Pelvic Floor Exercises Arguably one of the easiest, quickest and simplest of pregnancy fitness exercises to remember, lower pelvic floor exercises are also most often neglected. Holding your bladder, uterus and bowel in place, the pelvic floor is a sling of muscles between the base of your spine to your pubic bone. Weakening of this sling of muscles can lead to stress incontinence (figures indicate more than 30% of new mothers suffer with this) and decreased sexual pleasure (even if you are not pregnant), even prolapse (usually later on - 40% of women over 50 show a degree of prolapse).
The good news is that keeping your pelvic floor strong as a part of your pregnancy fitness plan is ridiculously easy, you just have to get into an (invisible) routine. Imagine you are trying not to pass urine or stop the flow, then extend the tightening as far back as you can to feel the muscles round your bottom tightening as well. Breathing slowly and deeply, alternate holding the contraction for as long as possible with sort sharp hold / release contractions. N.B. No other muscles should be working at the same time (eg. abdominals, legs). Doing these regularly throughout your day can lead to benefits such as intensified orgasms, reduced risk of stress incontinence and future prolapse, even a shorter second stage of labour!
Below is a small selection of videos showing some other simple pregnancy fitness exercises that will help.
