Since no truly healthy diet would be complete without a regular exercise regime we’ll go ahead and wrap it up with this. The concept of exercising when you’re nine months pregnant might seem appalling right now, but regular exercise has actually been shown to make both pregnancy and delivery go much more smoothly for both mother and baby.

The days in which women were expected to take to their beds for the duration of their pregnancy are fortunately long over, and if you exercised regularly before you became pregnant you will enjoy being able to continue to do so until you deliver. The only difference between exercising when you’re pregnant and when you’re not is that you need to take much more care not to overdo it. Women who consume too few calories while pregnant and exercise too much have been shown to stunt the growth of their fetus, so do everything in moderation.

A good guideline to exercising when you’re pregnant is that if you are too out of breath to speak while you are doing it you would probably be better off putting it aside until after. This isn’t the time to start training for your first five mile marathon, but if you regularly exercise twenty to thirty minutes a day you should be able to continue with your normal routine. Your pre-pregnancy fitness level is going to be the determining factor in what you can and cannot do while pregnant.

One factor you do need to consider is the impact of your exercise routine. While high impact exercise during the first eight weeks (when you usually don’t even know you’re pregnant) hasn’t been shown to cause problems, doing these exercises as you progress places you at a higher risk of injuring yourself and, potentially, your baby. As soon as you realize you are pregnant you should consider switching to a low impact, strength focused training regimen.

Pilates, yoga, swimming and walking are wonderful for expectant mothers, although you should be wary of placing too much strain on the stomach muscles when doing Pilates. Dancing and step aerobics are also wonderful for helping you stay fit if you can’t stomach the thought of giving up your energetic exercise regime. Strength training will help you to build up the muscles in your back, neck and legs, making carrying 20 pounds of baby around in your ninth month much easier.

Try to avoid anything that requires balance as you roll into your second and third trimester, since your center of gravity is going to shift and cause you to be more awkward than you were previously. Contact sports that could potentially cause abdominal injury, such as basketball or soccer, should also be cut out from the very beginning. Abdominal injury, even when accidental, can cause miscarriage at any point in the pregnancy. Your reputation for athletic prowess will remain until you can safely get back on the court.

Regardless of what type of exercise you choose to participate in while you are pregnant you are going to want to clear it with your physician first. This is especially true if you have not regularly exercised previously or you regularly participate in strenuous activities, such as high impact aerobics, timed swimming or running. They may recommend that you steer clear of some of the exercises you previously enjoyed until after you have given birth to help keep you and baby safe and healthy.

Be careful that you do not exercise to the point of exhaustion and that you don’t allow yourself to become dehydrated. Drink plenty of fluids when you exercise, and if the heat is extreme stay inside instead of gearing up for that hike you had in mind. Also, try to avoid exercising either on an empty stomach or right after a meal. The drop in blood sugar you are going to get from not eating might cause you to become dizzy and collapse while you are exercising, and working out on a full stomach when you have baby pushing on it from the other side could make you nauseous.

When Not To Exercise When Pregnant

If you have a medical condition such as diabetes or pre-eclamsia, you are at risk for pre-term labor, you have an incompetent cervix or you have experienced PERM (preterm rupture of the membranes, which means that your water has already broken or you are leaking amniotic fluid) talk to your doctor before starting any kind of exercise routine, even a mild one. They may recommend that you spend time on bed rest to help keep your baby safely inside you and growing for a little bit longer, and exercising in this instance may do more harm than good.