Go read the Disclaimer again. I am not a doctor. This is not medical advice. Seriously.
By exercise, we usually mean physical activity with the goal of regaining, maintaining or improving physical fitness or strength. While I hate to encourage the body/mind dichotomy, the body doesn't much care why it is engaged in an physical activity. You can be running for pleasure or to increase your fitness; the effects on you physically will be approximately the same either way. But you'll have more fun if you do what is fun, and you are more likely to stick with it.
If you are planning on getting pregnant, and your daily life does not include enough physical activity to support good health, searching out and participating in pleasurable activity that improves fitness and strength is going to be easier before you get pregnant than after you get pregnant. You may be marginally more motivated after you get pregnant, but you might also be feeling quite unwell some of the time.
For a long time, health care providers were very opposed to exercise during pregnancy, and a lot of them seem to think that if there is any question, it is safer to be sedentary than it is to be active. Perhaps for some pregnancies this is the case, and if you and your health care provider conclude your pregnancy is one of them, by all means, do what is best for you.
But if your pregnancy is not one of those cases, you might be wondering what is safe to do, and what to stop doing until some appropriate time after your baby is born and thriving and your breastfeeding relationship is well-established and you have recovered from the birth. There are some truly shitty books out about what you should and should not do while pregnant. There are also some good ones. I particularly liked Van Groenou's book. It can easily be used as a reference (which makes it repetitive if read straight through); it includes a lot of outdoor activities; it distinguishes by trimester what risks you might consider in decided what to do.
In my personal experience, walking was really great, except when I was nauseous, and until the sciatica made it too painful (fortunately, whenever I sat down, the sciatica went away; some women have it constantly). I did not start swimming until quite late. If I had it to do over, I'd have switched to swimming as soon as walking became painful. Even low-level aerobic exercise when I was past due felt fantastic.
ACOG used to say don't let your heart rate get above 140; there was no research to support this, and there is now research indicating there is no particular risk associated with this heart rate. ACOG worries that you might cook your baby by exercising vigorously; no cases of this are ever cited, which suggests they don't exist (while hot tubs actually can cause some problems).
Some health care providers and books suggest that mild-to-moderate exercise might help prevent nausea in the first trimester. That's a crap shoot, in my experience. It made me feel worse about half the time. It would be nice if it did work, so give it a shot and good luck to you. I hope it works.
I strongly advocate staying indoors, bonding with your baby, learning to see and hear and feel and smell your baby's cues for eating, peeing, pooping and sleeping. And, of course, snuggling with your baby, and feeding frequently, and, hopefully, having some people who love you around to help you do this and who care for you in hands-on ways (like, feeding you -- and I mean, them holding the fork or spoon and giving you bites while you hold the baby, if that's what it takes). If you feel up to it and the weather cooperates, some time in the sun outdoors would be great, whether that's a walk or a place to sit in the sun. The first six to eight weeks postpartum are not a time to be setting personal bests, or trying to lose your pregnancy weight, or going on a diet or anything along those lines. Nest.
When your baby is a bit more adjusted to life outside (the womb), and that enables you to get some rest and some regular food and the hormonal readjustment from being pregnant to breastfeeding is well underway (people say it's done after six weeks. They lie. Our hair is still falling out. It is not done yet.), you may feel a yen to be out and about. That's fantastic. Follow that craving, but with a weather eye to the problems unique to active mammaries.
There was a study a few years ago that purported to show that the lactic acid build up from vigorous exercise made mama's milk taste bad. (It wasn't a particularly good study.) The bad advice derived from this told women they should pump-and-dump. Again, the breast is not a flesh bottle; just like with alcohol, as the lactic acid is cleared from the bloodstream, it is cleared from the breast, so it is not necessary to remove it and throw it away as somehow having gone "bad". Furthermore, most babies don't notice any taste difference or at any rate, give no indication of caring.
There are some crazy-ass ideas out there about appropriate bras to wear while exercising during the period of time you breastfeed. In an effort to suppress those outsize boobies, one batch of particularly stupid authors suggest doubling up on bras to make sure those puppies don't move. They also act as if breastfreeding is optional and not a likely choice, which suggests why they made this particular error.
You will probably need some kind of support if you are jogging or doing something similarly vigorous with impact. You do not need to stop the boobs from moving entirely; you just need to slow them down and limit the distance they travel. Compressing lactating breasts leads to plugged ducts and mastitis. If your boobs are outrageously huge, try Decent Exposures.
Copyright 2006 by Rebecca Allen.
Created February 4, 2006 Updated March 8, 2006