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The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) Committee Opinion on
Physical Activity and Exercise during Pregnancy (2015): Woman with uncomplicated pregnancies
should be encouraged to engage in aerobic and strength conditioning exercise before, during, and
after pregnancy. Regular physical activity during pregnancy improves or maintains physical fitness,
helps with weight management, reduces the risks of gestational diabetes in obese women, and
enhances psychologic well-being.
https://www.acog.org/-/media/Committee-Opinions/Committee-on-Obstetric-
Practice/co650.pdf?dmc=1&ts=20160414T2312145666
The Journal of Maternal-Fetal and Neonatal Medicine (2012) entitled: Exercise during pregnancy
reduces the rate of cesarean and instrumental deliveries: results of a randomized controlled trial. This
paper concludes that a program of moderate-intensity exercise performed throughout pregnancy was
associated with a reduction in the rate of cesarean, instrumental deliveries and can be recommended
for healthy women in pregnancy. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22715981
And finally, here is an interesting article from The New York Times about exercise and your
offspring: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/are-we-born-to-run/?_r=0
Lifestyle Guidelines
Decades of research in neuroscience have identified a robust link between aerobic exercise and
subsequent cognitive clarity. This is one of the many reasons we recommend regular exercise daily.
But other lifestyle considerations are equally important during pregnancy to optimize your health and
your experience.
It is important that you are sleeping as many hours as you need to feel rested. We recommend that
you nap when you are tired, and slow your mornings down so you can rise later, especially if you
experience insomnia, which is quite common in pregnancy. Honor your body’s rhythms and allow
your body to rest deeply when it is tired.
We recommend that you keep stress to a minimum, love and laugh frequently, and most importantly,
avoid negative feelings. Psychologists and medical providers have long believed that positive
thinking helps with stress management and can even improve your health and self- esteem.
In their book, The Confidence Code, Kay and Shipman define NATs as negative automatic thoughts
that come up in a recurrent fashion, constantly buzz around in your head, demand your attention, and
hijack your sense of self-confidence, power, and calm. Our society reinforces NATS and fear-based
thinking during pregnancy, labor, breastfeeding, and mothering, and women are especially vulnerable
during this time. NATs undermine pregnant women’s confidence in the healthy normal process of
pregnancy and undermine a woman’s innate power. Lack of confidence translates into fear and
anxiety and can undermine a woman’s pregnancy, labor, delivery, breastfeeding, and mothering
experiences.