24 Weeks 5 Days
I won’t lie, I’m not good at exercising. I’ve been to the gym (Which I pay a monthly fee for and cannot cancel. See: Bad with money.) twice since learning I was pregnant. The first time was to continue my regular Pilates class, which I left because I was horribly dizzy halfway through. Second time was about a month ago when I thought yoga would be a great exercise while I’m pregnant, but sadly also made me horribly dizzy.
Regardless of my obvious lack of “real” exercise, I do try to keep myself moving while I’m pregnant. Not that it’s horribly difficult to do that with a toddler and school. This week though, we started our Bradley Method class and I’ve been trying to keep up with the exercises, which I think is a good idea for any woman to do. The Bradley Method’s exercises focus on keeping your muscles that support you during pregnancy and birth strong. Here’s a brief explanation of them:
- Walking: Yeah, it’s good for anyone to walk regularly. Just making sure to walk for a solid 5-10 minutes a day is great exercise though. I’m not talking about the walk and stop of the grocery store or anything like that, but just make a trek around the block. For me, this is easy to get done with just walking from Peanut’s preschool to my building, which also happens to be all uphill. I often stop and rest for a minute when I’m halfway up.
- Pelvic Rocks: I wrote more detail about these here and as I said in that post, they’re great for easing pregnancy pain. Just the act of being on all fours is nice for getting pressure off of my organs.
- Butterfly: Sit in a “butterfly” position (soles of your feet against each other and pull them in as close to you as comfortable) against the wall. Have someone put pressure (NOT push, just pressure) on the insides of your knees as you bring them together, then the outsides of your knees as you bring them back apart. Doing this one just a few times a day is great for your legs, which do a surprising amount of work in labor.
- Kegels: These are the ones that are always made fun of on TV. Here’s a better detail of how to do a kegel. These things are great because they’re easy to do and strengthen your pelvic floor, which obviously goes through a lot during labor. Doing these regularly can help with urinary incontinence. Personally, I try to do one every time I sneeze so I don’t have a Pregnant Woman Pee When You Sneeze episode.
All these things are super easy to do and can help your pregnancy and birth immensely. Exercise during pregnancy is very important indeed, but it doesn’t have to be the pain that everyone seems to think.
I am now 24 weeks and 5 days pregnant. I feel huge, but then again I think I’ve felt huge the whole time. I looked at my belly pictures from just a few weeks ago and I was amazed at how much smaller I was, but at that time I felt enormous. It’s amazing how perspective changes.
Twig is a happy little bouncer and loves to kick me straight in the stomach when I’m eating. This means I’m generally consuming less at once because of the sudden need for it to all come back up. I very much hope that Twig loses this habit before his/her kicks get super powerful in the third trimester.
One thing that’s really getting to me lately is heartburn. Wow, it’s been bad. If I eat anything more interesting than a plain piece of bread beyond maybe 6PM, I can’t sleep because of the pain. I’ve been working on sitting up for long periods before trying to go to bed and it helps a bit, but there are still nights where I have to get so punch-drunk tired that I can’t function before I can fall asleep through the pain. The other night I woke up at 3AM and the heartburn was still there.
Even with that said, I’m not taking any medication for it. I continue to not buy it (or accept it from people who are trying to give it to me) because I know that when it gets bad, I’ll take it if it’s there and I really want to avoid taking medication unless absolutely necessary. It’s not consistently bad, so if the medication isn’t there I can still avoid it, but I’m sure it’ll just get worse as the pregnancy progresses. Can anyone suggest some natural remedies for heartburn?
