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Steps restore fitness after baby arrives

By DAVID NORRIE Give Me Ten
Published September 7, 2007

Last week's column explored exercise routines to help tone your body during pregnancy and prepare for delivery.

Trainers Catherine Bedard and Francesca Greenwood, both mothers, advised expectant women to increase their water consumption and add about 300 nutritional calories a day to their diet.

Listen to your body, consult your physician and pay special attention to the core muscles, they said, recommending Pilates moves in particular.

Today we will share their tips for getting back in shape while caring for a newborn.

Survey the landscape: Start calling gyms in your area. Get on the computer and Google some Web sites on the subject of postnatal fitness.

After her second child, Greenwood stumbled upon a great program in her neighborhood called Stroller Strides. It's a simple, but practical, workout in which new moms got together to walk with their babies.

She says it helps to provide a change of scenery outside the home as well as a good support group, which provides an outlet for women to talk about what their bodies are going through.

Enlist a workout partner: In her postnatal personal training sessions, Greenwood often has the mother perform exercises holding the newborn baby in a safe manner, which incorporates the baby's weight into functional strength training.

For example, a simple lunge while coddling the infant against the chest, or a pushup performed over the baby, can help the bond between mother and child while avoiding the need to leave the baby unattended or in the care of others while exercising.

She says these type of exercises made her feel the most comfortable and also helped her get back to work a lot sooner. She highly recommends group training or "baby boot camps" as they are sometimes called.

The Kegel: It's a word most women are already familiar with and some are too shy to talk about, but Bedard says that all pregnant women should be doing Kegels before and after pregnancy.

Named after Dr. Arnold Kegel, the exercises are those in which a woman clenches and then relaxes the pubococcygeus muscles, or the muscles of the pelvic floor, which stretch from the pubic bone to the coccyx, or tailbone.

Strengthening these muscles will not only help ease delivery, but afterward they will help restore tone to the muscles surrounding the pelvic area and vagina, which aid in enhancing sexual pleasure.

The best part is that no one can see you doing Kegels, and you can do them anytime, at work, while driving or watching TV. You can do them for repetitions or an even better idea is to perform them for a set time, like two minutes a day.

Baby steps: The one recurring theme is that women should do what they are comfortable with and used to.

If you exercise regularly, continue doing so as long as you feel good. If you don't exercise but want to stay fit during pregnancy, start slowly and monitor yourself while consulting a physician on a regular basis. By no means approach pregnancy as a time to start becoming an Olympic athlete.

After following these guidelines, mothers-to-be should feel more energetic and enjoy an easier overall pregnancy.

"Working out keeps you in good habits and helps you return to your normal shape a lot sooner," Greenwood said.

As for any fears, she says, "I have had clients who stopped working out because they were scared to hurt the baby. You're not going to hurt it, especially if you seek out the right information or enlist the help of a personal trainer. Believe me, you'll thank yourself for doing it."

[Last modified September 6, 2007, 07:55:15]