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Womb Within

Regular exercise good for pregnancy

by Marijke on October 10th, 2008

It’s not being suggested that you train for a marathon while you’re pregnant, but expert guidelines are suggesting that pregnant women get regular moderate exercise throughout their pregnancy.

The 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines presented by the Department of Health and Human Services included a section on pregnancy exercising. The guidelines suggest that women who are not advised against exercise because of pregnancy complications or health issues, should get at least two and a half hours of moderate aerobic exercise designed to get the heart pumping. However, women after three months of pregnancy shouldn’t do exercises that require them to be on their back. The time should be spread out into several shorter periods rather than all once.

There are several benefits to keeping fit during pregnancy because being in good physical shape could reduce the length of labor.

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Kara, blogger at MamaSweat, wrote a couple of good posts on this topic: What’s Your Heart Rate? and The Importance of Exercise During Pregnancy at TipTopTurtle.com. What do you think about what she wrote?

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1 opinion for Regular exercise good for pregnancy

  • Kara at MamaSweat
    Oct 11, 2008 at 7:48 am

    I just posted about this on two blogs because I had a doc tell me not to get my heart rate above (you might have to sit down for this) 120! I recently learned that the “shorter/easier labor” benefit is more likely to occur if you continue to exercise through the entire pregnancy (not pooping out say at 32 weeks, like I did last pregnancy). But there are other great benefits to baby. Sadly many physicians are ill-informed.

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