Being in your best health before becoming pregnant is a really good start for a healthy pregnancy, alongside focusing on staying physically active throughout your pregnancy, no matter how much you weigh.
Exercising consistently can help reduce minor related ailments such as varicose veins, constipation and stiffness. In addition to this, exercising your pelvic floor muscles and abdominal wall muscles regularly will help them to regain strength and tone more quickly after birth. Your pelvic floor is a group of muscles within your pelvis that hold and support everything in place. It is made up from muscles and ligaments that support your body and when you are pregnant your baby too. As your baby gets heavier, your pelvic muscles can weaken. To some extent this relaxing of the pelvic floor is needed to help you when you are in labour. The muscles here are supposed to relax to allow for birth.
In years gone by, we would have walked around more and cultivated land or similar, we would have maintained a level of strength in these muscles from our daily life. Today however, we do less manual work and may need to do some exercises to keep these muscles toned. One way of helping this is antenatal yoga. There are many yoga positions and movements which help to keep strength within these muscles and can help to stop you from having pelvic related problems before and after birth
When you are pregnant, especially early on or in the last few weeks, it can feel harder to be in a exercise mindset and push through to get active, however, the important thing is to be active and get your blood flowing. There are many benefits to exercising when you are pregnant not only for you but for baby too. For you, it can help to reduce backaches, constipation, bloating and swelling to increasing your energy, improving your mood and even help you sleep better. For baby, you will be releasing hormones that will make you feel good, these positive hormones will be sensed by your baby.
There are many exercises that are safe to do during your pregnancy, but it is important not to overdo it and to use caution, especially if you have not exercised often before. However, if you have been regularly exercising, you can keep on, remembering that you may need to adjust your workout and definitely listen to your body. You should chat to your class teachers or instructor about your pregnancy and they can guide you towards an antenatal exercise routine. Swimming, walking and things like antenatal yoga are great, low impact exercises that can be highly beneficial for pregnant women.
Practising yoga can also help you to stay physical and active right up until your baby is born, which can help you to stay more mobile and feel more energetic during labour. Yoga can help regain muscles strength within your body after you’ve had your baby too, at the studio you can bring baby with you whilst you exercise!
Here at The Real Birth Studio, we run prenatal yoga classes routinely. As well as postnatal classes to keep you fit and healthy throughout your pregnancy and after child birth. To get in touch on admin@therealbirthcompanyltd.com
