When I fell pregnant with baby O, I had been a member of the Ealing Eagles running club for 3 months and was at the “peak” of my running, having improved my speed significantly and discovered that I was also a bit of a sprinter with the 400m relays I took part in for fun. I was also practicing ballet, a hobby since my youth, and going to weekly dynamic yoga classes. So the big question was:

Was it safe to exercise in pregnancy and keep going with all my activities?

To put it in perspective, I come from France where during your pregnancy you are followed by your gynecologist (contrary to here, you see your gynecologist yearly for birth control prescription, smear tests etc… rather than the GP). It appears that many of them are old-fashioned cautious and recommend to stop exercising, especially running. How many times have I heard from my French friends “You shouldn’t run, you can have a miscarriage!”.

Obviously it depends on your individual health and circumstances, but after checking with my GP, my midwife, my ballet teacher, fellow runners, after reading the NHS guidelines on exercise in pregnancy, various pieces of research and blogs, I came to the following conclusion:

• I could run right from the start of the pregnancy and for as long as it felt comfortable, provided I was not pushing myself (they recommend that you are still able to hold a conversation while running. I was just keeping an eye on my Garmin’s heart rate monitor), making sure not to overheat, drinking lots of fluids and refueling my body properly.
• I could keep doing ballet but be mindful of my balance and my joints as during pregnancy we produce a hormone called Relaxin which relaxes not only the joints around the pelvis and rib cage but also all joints in the body. So I stopped jumping.
• I could keep practicing yoga as long as I was adapting my practice: so not too dynamic in order to not over heat and no inversions. I actually stopped going to my dynamic yoga classes right from the start and followed some youtube videos instead, before attending some local prenatal yoga classes in my last trimester.

So in the end I ran up until 5.5 months pregnant (I was worried that running any longer might damage my pelvic floor muscles and create incontinence problems further down the line), danced up to 2 weeks before giving birth (and even carefully “pirouetted” up to week 34 as I seem to have adjusted my balance week after week), and did yoga up until the end. I think walking up and down 3 flight of stairs at work to go from my desk to the toilets also helped me stay healthy. 😉

And in the end I had a very straightforward pregnancy and gave birth to a beautiful baby boy in March 2016. 🙂

References:
 nhs.uk
 babycenter.com
 livestrong.com
 And various other websites I read long before starting this blog.