During the pregnancy but more so in the last couple of weeks I have been asked a lot about my running during pregnancy. Some of these questions are below:
Are you still running?
How many miles are you running?
Why do you continue to run?
Did your doctor approve running/exercise while pregnant and have you done research on the topic?
Do you monitor your heart rate while running?
Do you have any guidelines that you follow while running?
Should I also run while pregnant?
I thought it would be nice to answer these questions in my blog.
Are you still running?
I am still running and hopefully if all goes well I can run until the end. With Lucas I decided to stop running about 2 weeks before delivery because I was getting pain in my foot. I swtiched to the pool and did swimming and aqua jogging after this point.
How many miles are you running?
Currently around 70 miles (112km) per week. Some days I run twice and on others run once in the morning and then swim in the afternoon. All of my running is just jogging now. For the first 5 months I was adding in some short tempos and interval work but over the last month have cut these out as it started to feel uncomfortable going at a faster pace.
Why do you continue to run?
There are so many reasons why I am still running.
* Maintain fitness and retain muscle tone. Hopefully this will help with a quicker return to competitive running.
* Prevent excessive weight gain.
* Combat fatigue and stress. Sounds strange but after running I always feel more energized and less stressed.
* Boost my mood. Whenever I don't run I am never myself. My husband will tell you that when I cant exercise my mood is not always the best.
* Looking at the research helps strengthen my decision to run through pregnancy. It is well documented that exercise positively affects pregnancy, labor, and possibly pregnancy outcome. Exercise improves cardiovascular fitness and overall well-being. It can help to reduce the occurrence of gestational diabetes. Some research has shown that moderate intense exercise throughout pregnancy can lessen the time of delivery and complications. Also the fetus of the exercising mother seems to tolerate the stresses of labor better than the non-exercising mother (Sterfield B. Physical activity and pregnancy outcome: Review and recommendations. Sports Medicine 23:33-47, 1997)
Did your doctor approve running/exercise while pregnant and have you done research on the topic?
Yes and yes. My Dr. not only supported my decision to keep running but encouraged it. Her rationale was that before getting pregnanat I ran around 100-110 miles per week. My body is used to the miles and the movement. I have been doing a lot of reading on the subject of running and exercising while pregnant. There is not a whole lot on just running exclusively but a good amount of studies on exercise in general. One article I particularly liked titled 'Physical Activity During Pregnancy' was published in the Journal of Pregnancy and outlines how society has changed on their views of exercise and pregnancy. A summary of this article is below. Plus at the end of this blog I have put all of the references and links that I used so you can refer to them if interested.
Opinions on pregnancy and physical activity have changed dramatically over the years. For a long time physical activity was seen as harmful and detrimental to a healthy pregnancy and not supported by society or medical professionals. It was thought that exercise could harm the fetus and lead to a preterm baby or restrict the growth of the fetus and cause infants that were too small. In 1985, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (ACOG) published the first recommendations for exercising while pregnant. These included the following:
a) Maternal heart rate should not exceed 140 beats per minute
b) Maternal core temperature should not exceed 100.4 degrees F (38 degrees C)
c) Strenuous activities should not exceed 15 minutes in durationd) Women who did not exercise before pregnancy were advised not to start physical activity while pregnant.
A lot of research was done on the topic between 1980 and 1990 that supported the need for the recommendations to be updated as many studies proved the safety of exercise while pregnant. This lead to the ACOG changing their guidelines. In 1994 they removed the restriction on exercise duration and heart rate. Physical activity could be performed but not to exhaustion. Then in 2002 the ACOG started to promote physical activity showing the numerous health benefits for all women, not only those who performed physical activity before pregnancy (as long as given approval from the doctor). The most recent ACOG guidelines (published in 2002 and reaffirmed again in 2009) recommend 30 minutes or more of moderate exercise on most, if not all days of the week. In 2008 the United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) published the first ever Physical Activity Guidelines for Pregnant woman. This publication stated that all pregnant woman are recommended to perform at least 150 minutes of physical activity done at moderate intensity (with doctors approval) (Smith K, Campbell C, Hindawi Publishing Corporation, Journal of Pregnancy, 2012, Physical Activity During Pregnancy: Impact of Applying Different Physical Activity Guidelines,Volume 2013, Article ID 165617, 9 pages)
Do you monitor your heart rate while running?
No. My doctor believes (and I agree with her) that how you feel before, during and after a workout is a far more effective way to assess the health, safety and quality of the workout than the heart rate response. My doctor and many other health professionals are recommending pregnant woman follow the Borg Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) to monitor the effort of exercise during pregnancy. RPE is an effective way to measure the intensity level of the physical activity you are performing. The scale is based on how hard you feel your body is working. This basis comes from the feelings you experience during exercise including an increase in breathing, sweating, muscle tiredness and heart rate. Even though it is a subjective evaluation, it has been shown that the exertion rating that a person gives is a good indicator of the actual heart rate during exercise. Pregnant women are normally advised to stay within the 12-14 range on the borg scale. (Borg, 1998 as referenced by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention - Perceived exertion). A table showing the borg scale is below:
Do you follow any guidelines while running and pregnant?
Yes. After reading many scholarly articles related to this issue and talking with my doctor I do stick to some guidelines.
1) Listen to your body.
There are days when I feel great and I will go a little further and faster and then there are days I feel really bad and only make it 30 minutes with walking in between. I do not monitor my heart rate as explained above but use the Borg scale. I am never running to the point of exhaustion or where I am too much out of breath. Pushing yourself to the limit forces your body to use up oxygen that should be going to your baby.
2) Avoid overheating and dehydration.
When summer hits here in Houston (which will be soon) I will have to be even more careful about running and monitoring how I am feeling. It gets so hot here even early in the morning that I may have to do some on the treadmill. This is because if your core temperature gets too high it could cause problems with the baby like spina bifida. Also the risk of dehydration becomes much greater in the high humidity which can lead to premature contractions (netdoctor.co.uk).
3) Run without a watch sometimes
I do not run with my Garmin watch anymore and sometimes without a watch altogeher. I just run how I feel each day. After having such an intense and structured programme leading up to world champs it has been nice just to run how I feel and when I want. However with the spring marathon season and track season starting up I can feel the urge to want to train and compete coming back :-) Which is a good thing. I will be that much more hungry and determined when I come back after the birth (hoping everything goes smoothly).
4) Watch for any signs signalling I should stop running:
Warning sins to terminate exercise while pregnant:
* Vaginal bleeding
* Dizziness
* Headache
* Chest pain
* Muscle weakness
* Major calf pain or swelling
* Preterm labour
* Decreased fetal movement
* Amniotic fluid leakage
Source: Artal and O'Tolle 2003, Br J Sports Med 37:6-12
Should I also run while pregnant?
This depends on a lot of variables:
1) Did you run before you got pregnant? I would definitley not encourage someone to start running while pregnant if they have not run much in the past. Your body would not be used to the motion and impact. Instead I would recommend starting with walking or swimming or other forms of low impact exercise. The American College of Sports Medicine have suggested that pregnant woman par take in physical activity on most days of the week if not all. They recommend at least 30 minutes of physical activity performed at a moderate intensity. For those hoping to maintain higher levels of fitness there research has shown that this will occur by doing 20-60 minutes of higher intensity exercise sessions on 3-5 days a week (Artal and O'Tolle 2003, Br J Sports Med 37:6-12).
2) Do you have any conditions that would put the baby at risk by running or exercising? There are some conditions during pregnancy that may limit the amount of exercise you can safely do. The best advice is to talk with your doctor before starting any new exercise while pregnant. Some of the health factors are poorly controlled Type 1 diabetes, a history of two or more miscarriages, carrying twins, persistent heavy bleeding, heavy smoking and history of extremely sedentary lifestyle. Other reasons are a background of premature labour, anemia, heart disease, restrictive lung disease, morbid obesity, extremely underweight (BMI under 12) and chronic bronchitis (Artal and O'Tolle 2003, Br J Sports Med 37:6-12).
Sorry that this blog got long. I hope that you enjoyed reading. I will finish with some photos of the growing baby bump and my weight chart. The weight gain chart is comparing my first pregnancy with this pregnancy. With this pregnancy I decided to track my weight before getting pregnant as I was advised by my doctor that I needed to put on some weight in order to get my menstrual cycle back to make getting pregnant easier. It seems for me this always happens when I am between 115lb-120lb.
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| Weight chart comparing my first and second pregnancy |
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| 6 month baby bump :-) |
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| Soon to be big brother giving a hug :-) |
Next blog I will write about how the body changes during pregnancy and what issues this can cause related to running.
Below is a list of articles and links that I found interesting while researching this topic.
Link to this paper: http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/37/1/6.long
2) Borg Scale of perceived exertion:
http://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/everyone/measuring/exertion.html
3) History of physical activity guidelines for pregnant woman:
Smith K, Campbell C 2012, Physical Activity During Pregnancy: Impact of Applying Different Physical Activity Guidelines, Journal of Pregnancy 2013; 165617
Link to this paper: http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jp/2013/165617/
4) Benefits of exercise while pregnant:
Sterfield B 1997. Physical activity and pregnancy outcome: Review and recommendations, Sports Medicine 23:33-47
Happy Running Everyone!!!
