Previous installments of “Feel the Burn” can be found here.
I don’t care, do what you want.
fin
…
No? Okay, let’s talk about this. You can definitely work out during your first trimester, provided:
1. You have had a conversation about it with your VERY OWN qualified medical professional, be that an ob-gyn, a midwife, or the babbling brook you plan to immerse your junk in to give birth.
2. You are experiencing a normal, low-risk pregnancy as diagnosed by the above medical professional, or a non-low-risk pregnancy for which the above medical professional has signed off on exercise.
3. You feel like it.
I, personally, did not work out at all during my first pregnancy, apart from the occasional brisk stroll, because I didn’t really start being a Serious Gym Rat until after I had my daughter. I was also reading the (awful) Girlfriends’ Guide to Pregnancy (don’t buy it, but use our affiliate link if you do), which is a treatise that distills the experience of having a bunch of frenemies who say things like “well, I would never forgive myself if I murdered my unborn child by doing a few sets of alternating lunges, but you do you” into a WHOLE BOOK. I never took that part particularly seriously, but now I reject it with extreme prejudice. This pregnancy (I am pregnant, in case you do not read every single link roundup) I have kept on keepin’ on, like a bird that flew [and did TRX table rows.]
What I’ve learned from talking to ob-gyns, and my own midwife, is that we really do not know a whole lot about exactly what is and is not safe when it comes to exercise during pregnancy, because, as you can imagine, the studies are tough to conduct. A lot of what we know is actually based on women who have continued to work at very physically-demanding jobs during pregnancy (which is associated with a higher rate of miscarriage), but, of course, that comes with a variety of stress and also limits a woman’s ability to, you know, stop when things don’t feel right. The recommendations for things like heart rate are no longer taken particularly seriously (and are exceptionally different for different women.) You’ll see “don’t go above 140,” but I’m ALWAYS above 140 when I’m working out, so I’ve just taken to strapping a heart rate monitor under the bottom of my sports bra and taking a few minutes to simmer once I hit 160. For me, that’s a good bet.
Things I Know For Sure (In That I Have Received Consistent and Plausible-Seeming Advice From Professionals About It and It Has Proved Intuitive in My Own Life):
1. This is not the time to boldly start a new exercise regimen if you are not currently physically active. That doesn’t mean you can’t start going for nice walks, and then slowly extending them or increasing your speed over time, it doesn’t mean you can’t putz around on the elliptical, it doesn’t mean you can’t go swimming, etc. But it’s not, like, a good time to say “man, I really gotta figure out what all this Crossfit fuss is about!” Crossfit will still be there once you give birth.
2. You can, for the most part, definitely keep doing what you’ve been doing. Your fetus is latched onto you like a bad date.
3. Use even better form than usual (I apologize, I know your form is flawless.) Loosen up on your goals for reps. Make ‘em pretty.
4. If you have a miscarriage in your first trimester, you are in good company; between one in four and one in five pregnancies will end in miscarriage during that time period. It’s shitty. It’s not you. You didn’t do anything. I just had a good, good friend in the BLOOM of fucking good health lose a pregnancy, and her doctor, bless him, sat down and took her hand and said: “let me be extremely clear about this, this had nothing to do with [activity people might blame because they have no awareness of the human body] or [activity people might have blamed in the 16th century] or [benign food product ingested].” Shit just happens. I really hope it doesn’t happen to you.
5. It’s a good time to ditch stuff like box-jumps or stuff that relies a ton on balance (though that will be more important as you get bigger and forget where your body parts are), you can start cooling it on stuff that involves a lot of torso twisting (SWEET.)
6. If you start cramping, stop. If you start bleeding, stop.
7. Hydrate more than usual, and don’t go in with an empty stomach, you’re more likely to faint than usual.
8. You may feel like death warmed-over for this whole trimester, and you don’t have to do a GODDAMN THING if you don’t want to.
Let’s expand on that.
Wildly generalizing, the two worst parts of pregnancy are the first 12 weeks and the last 4*. You do not yet look pregnant, you are often just bone-chillingly tired for no reason, and often you are a puke monster. This time was a lot better for me. Last time I threw up when I brushed my teeth, because my gag reflex became a hair trigger, but this time I only felt sick when I had an empty stomach. In related news, I am much, much larger than I was this time in my first pregnancy (your uterus may also boomerang out almost immediately, in a “oh, yeah, we’ve done this” reflex.) I encourage you to eat as well as you possibly can and do as much glorious physical activity as you possibly can in the time between when you test positive and when you hit about six weeks and start feeling like shit. It’s a lil window of delight.
I was able to do my thing, generally speaking, almost all of my first trimester, except for the wall I hit in week nine, when I went to the gym, and was just fucking useless. It’s not that my muscles were more sore than usual, or that my cardio was off. It’s that my body was tired and didn’t care. So I finished my session out, went home, and waited to feel like a person again.
This is for you, is the important thing to remember. Your body will make the baby, despite you. If you can only eat Ritz crackers, your body will extract the nutrients it needs from your withering corpse and give them to the baby. Women in comas have given birth to babies. Exercise during pregnancy in general looks like it’s pretty good for the baby, and all, but you’re going to be doing enough things, grimly, for the damn baby’s benefit, and more once the baby comes. Exercise can be a nice way to remember that you’re a person with a body that isn’t just incubating a plucked chicken, it can help you sleep, it MIGHT help with fatigue, but who the hell really knows?
Go for a nice walk, if you want to, okay?
*
*My advice for the last 4 weeks is to find a kiddie pool and make whoever put the baby in you or encouraged you to have one put in you spray you constantly with a cool mist of water while singing gentle soft-rock hits from the 1970s.
Tags: feel the burn, fitness, pregnancy
I’m 37 weeks and I worked out my whole first trimester (for whatever reason I had TONS of energy around 5-6 am every morning) and second trimester (save for a couple weeks in January when I just COULDN’T because of the extremely frigid weather, totally psychological) but it’s the third that got me. Or at least the last month or so. I’m just SO SORE in my pelvic region (sorry) every time I so much as go for a stroll. I’m trying to still get out there every other day and shuffle around my neighborhood but its more for my peace of mind than any idea of “fitness.” Incidentally I’m now staring at blameless joggers with jealous daggers.
Yogaaaaaaaaaa. I became a yoga person during my pregnancy and I am not regretting it one bit. Started doing prenatal (first at home then at a class) the moment I found out I was pregnant and gave been going to mom and baby yoga since the dude was born. As someone with tight hips and my shoulders permanently attached to my ear lobes, yoga has kept me looser than I have ever been in my life.
I’m so happy to hear that – the reasons you describe are why I am finally (I know I’m pretty late here) trying yoga out for the first time next week, and I am really hoping that it makes me more “loose” and not as cramped up and achey all the time.
I hope it works for you! I had gone to yoga class here and there but never consistently. I was always one of those people who just refused to get into it because it was a little too “breathe into the limbs of your tree and let your sap flow” for me, but now I like that part of it too!
That’s been exactly my hesitation! I’ll try to drop my inhibitions at the door and go with it. I could really use less of the shoulder/earlobes feeling.
If you can find a Yin Yoga class in your area, I highly recommend it. As a person both hippy-dippy-averse and stiff pretty much everywhere from being a sloth, this gentle, quietly meditative, designed-to-help-you-stretch-out-your-old-broken-parts form of yoga was the exact right place for me to start. No sweating! Sometimes I fall asleep! Try it.
Woooohooo yes, I am an annoying evangelist for prenatal yoga. It is the best, you all. In my experience, I have never made friends at a regular yoga class because everyone is busy rinsing their chi or whatever, but prenatal yoga was a warm-and-fuzzy community of women who were all in the same boat.
They say you can keep doing regular yoga throughout pregnancy with appropriate modifications, but I started prenatal at like, week … 8? Because of the ridiculous bone-wrenching exhaustion that Nicole mentions.
Ditto! I’m not even really a yoga person in regular life, but prenatal yoga = awesome. When you can’t walk because you have the sciatica of a 75-year-old Jewish grandmother? Prenatal Yoga. When you are made at the world, and want to do “practice yells”*? Prenatal Yoga. When you decide halfway through that you just want to lie on the floor for the rest of the class? Prenatal Yoga.
*Seriously. My teacher had us do this, and it was the GREATEST. Room full of pregnant ladies, yelling at the top of their lungs. She did make us do wall-sits though. Ugh.
This is my advice for the whole 9 months-
make whoever put the baby in you or encouraged you to have one put in you spray you constantly with a cool mist of water while singing gentle soft-rock hits from the 1970s.
You’re making a BABY. This person should worship you as a Goddess
I am not nor have I ever been pregnant, but still read this whole thing and all I could think about was how scary it must be to have so many conflicting, adamant pieces of advice hurled at you for an extended period of time when all you want to do is protect yourself and your baby.
It really messes with your head! I ended up giving up spinning and running during my pregnancy because I was so nervous, when I probably could have continued to do both those things without harm. I probably would have felt even better if I had continued throughout. God help me if I’m ever pregnant again, but if I do find myself knocked up, I’m going to take Nicole’s advice rather than listen to all the fearmongering nonsense.
This is why I give all my pregnant friends the book “Panic-Free Pregnancy,” which goes through all of the literature on pregnancy and is like: “Nope, that’s not a controlled study, there’s absolutely no evidence any of that is harmful” or “Hey, guys, soft cheese in the US are almost always pasteurized, so go ahead and eat them.” I read that book once per trimester when I was pregnant, usually while eating brie.
I’m so glad there’s a book like that, and I wish my coworker had it. She’s 32 weeks and goes on AT LENGTH about all the things she’s “not allowed” to do, whether by her boyfriend, or…..the world, or whatever, and it includes
1. eating deli meat. 2. eating most cheese. 3. eating any type of soft-serve ice cream. 4. going grocery shopping. 5. carrying groceries. 6. going into their basement. 7. doing laundry. 8. carrying laundry. 8. (winter only) shoveling snow. 9. brushing snow off her car. 10. driving when the weather is poor. 11. being a passenger in the car when weather is poor. 12. visiting poorly-ventilated homes of people with pets. 13. ingesting any sorts of medication, including Tums, and including Polysporin on cuts. 14. MY LIST GOES ON.
It’s probably impolite to say rude things about pregnant people, I guess, right? So instead I’ll just say: at least she should be going off on leave pretty soon, right?? For your sake? Do you have a countdown?
In about a month! I mean, my workplace is a veritable circus of issues in which she is the LEAST ridiculous, which should tell you something, though.
Although my finest hour was when she said she was going to leave early to go home during a snowstorm and said “It’s really dangerous for me to ditch my car because I’m pregnant!” and I told her “Oh, yeah, everyone else on the planet loves ditching their cars and it’s really healthy and safe for them, too!” and she did not like that.
I love you! You put “not allowed” in quotes! That’s how I always think of it, too, and I’m always disappointed to hear women use that phrase. I don’t blame them…there’s so much scary “advice” out there and you feel so vulnerable during pregnancy…but god, I hate that phrase.
It drives me truly insane. The worst part is that she likes that her boyfriend “won’t allow” her to do things–like laundry! He won’t ALLOW HER to carry laundry up and down stairs. I would rake my husband up one side and down the other before either of us “allowed” the other to do anything and it just rankles at me like you would not believe. Hate it.
lol i can’t help but wonder if she’s just like, reveling in NOT HAVING TO DO SHIT and is using the “not allowed” phrase as a guilt-free way of making it seem ok
Let’s be honest I would revel in not being “allowed” to do chores
Nooooo shiiiiiit.
“Golly gee whiz, I’m pregnant and NOT ALLOWED to do dishes, it’s… BAD FOR THE BABBY.”
Like, if he were NOT ALLOWING her to vote or something? Gross. But “not allowing” her to do shitty daily grind chores that are tedious and awful? Shuckaroonie, sign me UP.
Oh listen, I’ve been trying to get my boyfriend to not allow me to do laundry for ages, but he’s just too fucking feminist for that I guess. Idiot.
Umm…why can’t she have soft-serve ice cream? That just seems unnecessarily and condescendingly masochistic to me…
It’s been explained to me that soft-serve ice cream machines are not properly cleaned, usually, which means they are breeding grounds for listeria. (who knows?)
THAT IS A RISK I AM WILLING TO TAKE.
(Though I’m not pregnant but even if I WAS I’d probably still eat that shit all the time. <3 you, Soft Serve!)
I used to work at McDonald’s and the only thing I won’t eat from a McDonald’s is anything coming out of the soft-serve machine (which includes milkshakes, McFlurries, and cones). People pour more of the mix into the top without wiping it down thoroughly before and after.
That’s the problem with deli meat, too. The slicers aren’t properly cleaned.
Listeria isn’t a problem unless you’re very old, very young, medically fragile, or pregnant. Like, if I wandered into a deli and licked the slicer and rubbed cold meat all over my body then rolled around in a wading pool full of soft serve ice cream? Well… I’d probably get arrested, but I wouldn’t get really sick. Pregnant people, on the other hand, experience a HIGH risk of miscarriage when exposed to listeria.
Personally, I avoided cold deli meat (I ate all my sandwiches heated up or just did peanut butter) and soft serve ice cream, but I also have a BIG history of miscarriage (and I also totally ate unpasteurized blue cheese more than once, ON PURPOSE. oops).
So Listeria is a valid concern, but the endless hand wringing on pregnancy forums about what constitutes soft cheese (is it cream cheese? velveeta? what if the cheese is melted, does that make it soft?) is irritating as heck.
The “brushing snow off the car” thing has me baffled, above the already-high level of bafflement I have for the rest of this list.
I have been HOPING to hear more about her. *settles down for judgment and evil chuckles*
Yes, tell us more!
Jesus H. Christ I’m pregnant and I’ve done almost every single one of those things in the last WEEK (exceptions to the snow-related things because I don’t live in a snowy place.) Then again, I had a beer last night and just today I’ve had two cups of coffee, runny eggs and a tuna sandwich so I think I’ve crossed the line between “casual disregard for the rules” and “willful impertinence”
i hope this gives your baby superpowers
Also check out Emily Oster’s “Expecting Better” — sounds similar. She’s an economist who was frustrated by the lack of concrete data during her pregnancies, so she read all the studies herself and distills them in the book. It’s fantastic.
She also lost her shot at tenure at U of Chicago Booth School of Business because she wrote this book during her own pregnancy, instead of keeping up with the insane PUBLISH PUBLISH PUBLISH pace of scholarly research.
Because….. a book clearly presenting concrete scholarly data on pregnancy and risk??!?! MASS MARKET?? blllleaaaaagghhhh
You can, for the most part, definitely keep doing what you’ve been doing. Your fetus is latched onto you like a bad date.
I read those last two words in John Rhys-Davies’ voice from Raiders of the Lost Ark, which made them even more awesome.
And I read “Rhys Darby” in your post and so read that article quote in a slightly goofy New Zealand accent.
I’m not even close to wanting to get pregnant, but I love it when Nicole writes about pregnancy and motherhood stuff. I mean, I miiiight want a kid, but I certainly never want a kid right after I read anything about pregnancy. I’d be so much more gung-ho if my husband could just do it all for me. I mean, he actually gets paternity leave and I get nothing, so it would really work out!
Nicole is one of the few Internet People I trust to talk about pregnancy/motherhood.
This a million times.
Motherfucking seconded.
I feel the same way!
I nominate Nicole to write “The Regular (If Slightly Neurotic-Leaning, and Most Definitely Well-Read) Person Of All Gender’s Guide to Pregnancy” post series. I would read the shit out of that.
Yes x 1 million. We’re trying at the moment and oh, all the scaremongering shit that’s out there! Give it to me straight, Nicole.
This is timely for me; I miiight be pregnant right now and, if I’m not, I probably will be in the near future (fingers crossed) and I’m already getting Concerned Suggestions from the very few people who know we’re trying. Mostly stuff like “man, I just read this thing about fetal alchohol syndrome. It was so interesting! I’ll send it to you!” (subtle, guys). But also opinions on exercise (I’m signed up for a 5k in September). I mean, let me live.
I’m guessing it wasn’t the thing about how fetal alcohol syndrome is mostly made up.
Second trimester recommendations soon?
nonstop jumping jacks
lol im sorry i just had a bunch of butterfingers and im in a super goofy mood
*cough* OITNB
What if I just went around the Toast/the Internet in general dropping OITNB wherever I see something relevant to the 2nd season? That’d be bad, right?
I’m glad your friend had a good doctor to talk to.
Totally agreed. So glad the doc took the time to do that.
I read the Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy when I was in my early twenties, and I’m pretty sure it augmented the effectiveness my birth control for the next ten years.
There’s a lot of “Just because you’re pregnant is no reason not to do a level of beauty care that seems like it would take several hours a week” and “Totally have a crush on your OB/GYN – who is OBVIOUSLY MALE – as a way to encourage yourself to keep this beauty regimen up.”
I think we may actually have been encouraged to have a male OB/GYN for the crushing purposes.
I read the Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy during the first trimester of the pregnancy I just finished (wahoo!), and it made me ashamed to have the same biological parts and processes as the author.
It made me want to cultivate the hair on my legs and crotch into a beautiful garden.
I am getting a Zulily maternity wear ad on the side of this article–suspicious coincidence!
First off, congrats on the second pregnancy! (Perhaps it has been public for months, but I haven’t been paying attention?)
I am just rounding out my second trimester and still working out a lot, but I’ve had to change what I do. The first trimester was actually fine, I felt not-great but also not as terrible as a lot of people do. But I felt like running and doing physical activity made it a lot better! I think one of the best modifications I’ve made is to start running on the treadmill instead of outside. I can time running/walking intervals really easily and if I get tired or have to pee I can just step off of it and do something else, instead of having to haul my ass back home.
Will there be second and third trimester installments of this series? (I’m happy to help with them!!) If so – I want some REAL insight into diastasis recti because it’s impossible to research on the internet, because I keep getting stuck on “fitness” blogs that are just diet propaganda.
But yeah, whatever, eff the haters, I am 26 weeks pregnant and I look awesome and I (mostly) feel awesome and anyone who tries to tell me to stop working out is welcome to have a pull-up competition with me.
I was so determined that I was going to bike all through pregnancy, because I’d been bike commuting for the last couple of years, but then east coast winter got terrible right around the time I started getting so tired after an 8 hour shift on my feet that I’d call my husband and beg for a ride home. My risky exercise became walking to or from the bus stop on icy sidewalks. (Fetus is fine! Turns out, you can fall down kind of a lot!) By the time the weather improved, I was already into my second trimester, and I felt less confident about my balance and reflexes.
I looked into prenatal yoga classes as a way to trick other pregnant ladies into being my friends, but there were none where “affordable” overlapped with logistically possible.
But, cat/cow/pelvic rocks have really been helping my sore hips, so I bet there’s something to the whole yoga thing.
I spent my entire first trimester laying very still and trying not to puke, and then I spent the second trimester laying down and trying to get some damn sleep, and then I spent the third trimester laying down trying to get the fluid out of my ankles, and now the entire middle of my body has turned to jello and I’m not entirely sure my lower half isn’t just going to detach some day. So I’m going to contradict Nicole and say exercise even if you don’t feel like it! Or you’ll be sorry.
let the lower half of you detach and see what happens
perhaps babby will take control and ride around in it like doctor robotnik in one of his eggmobiles
Yep, I’m all for doing what you can. My last pregnancy was HARD. I walked a lot to try and keep fit but I was the biggest out of all of them (and he was the biggest baby) and I was just tired (especially in the first trimester!) As much as I’m glad for all the medical advances which give us more knowledge about what’s happening during pregnancy and how the baby develops, etc, I also think we’re bombarded with don’ts and I certainly found that stressful. There’s something to ignorance and bliss…
Yep, I'm all for doing what you can. My last pregnancy was HARD. I walked a lot to try and keep fit but I was the biggest out of all of them (and he was the biggest baby) and I was just tired (especially in the first trimester!) As much as I'm glad for all the medical advances which give us more knowledge about what's happening during pregnancy and how the baby develops, etc, I also think we're bombarded with don'ts and I certainly found that stressful. There's something to ignorance and bliss…