For a healthy pregnancy, experts are recommending to engage in resistance exercises such as swimming. Here’s how it can benefit you and your baby.
Pregnancy can be both a challenging and exciting phase of your life. It comes with a whole list of physical and psychological changes that are challenging to prepare for. During your pregnancy journey, you will become more sensitive to the choices you make, knowing their potential impact on the health of your unborn baby.
Every mother’s desire is not only to remain healthy during and after the pregnancy but to have a healthy baby as well. For a smooth and healthy pregnancy, health practitioners have recommended resistance exercises, such as swimming. The latter is believed to come with a plethora of benefits to both the mother and the baby.
Is Swimming Good For Pregnant Mothers?
Recent studies have confirmed the existence of substantial evidence asserting the safety and benefits of moderate amounts of swimming during pregnancy. Beginning or continuing a regular swimming program during pregnancy creates healthy mothers and healthy infants.
During the pregnancy period, it will be much easier for you to adopt a healthier, more active lifestyle. Even if you had previously accustomed yourself to a sedentary lifestyle.
How Does Swimming During Pregnancy Benefit the Baby?
What wouldn’t you give to deliver a healthy baby! Most mothers would sacrifice their souls if they had to. But this doesn’t have to happen if you make swimming your closest companion throughout your pregnancy period.
Researchers have found a strong link between swimming and healthy hearts in babies. A recent study found out that fetuses who were exposed to maternal exercise had a reduced fetal heart rate and increasing heart rate variability. On the contrary, the heart rates among non-exposed fetuses were much higher irrespective of gestational age or fetal activity.
Engaging in maternal exercise will lower your baby’s risk of fetal macrosomia– a condition where babies are born weighing more than 4 kilograms. This condition can come with life-threatening complications to you and long-term health complications to your baby, such as childhood obesity and other related problems.
Also, swimming reduces the risk of premature birth, fetal distress, and low birth weight; on the condition that the mother has no obstetric or medical contraindications for physical activity.
Contrary to past research findings, recent studies have established a connection between swimming and the protection of the fetus. Which helps prevent potential harm caused by the physiological adaptations of your body as it adjusts to physical exercise.
How Does Swimming During Pregnancy Benefit the Mother?
Engaging in swimming will help you experience an improved sense of wellbeing and relief from the discomfort associated with pregnancy, such as nausea, headache, poor posture, and back pain. It will also give you a great sense of control over your physical capabilities.
Researchers in Camilo José Cela University have established a close link between swimming and the prevention of excessive weight gain in pregnant women – a significant factor in the transmission of obesity. Swimming can also help prevent gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, the possibility of caesarian section, urinary incontinence, pelvic, and lower back pain.
It is recommended that you start your swimming routine between the first 9-12 weeks of pregnancy and remain consistent through to the 38-39 week duration. Exercising during early pregnancy will minimize the possibilities of discomfort in the late pregnancy stages when your body starts giving in to the relentless pressures of the pregnancy.
The goal of swimming during pregnancy is to maintain fitness, keep your unborn baby healthy, and adapt to a manageable exercise routine as your pregnancy progresses.
At the start of your pregnancy, you can engage in moderate swimming activity and adjust depending on your body’s capabilities.
Even as you prepare to start a regular swimming routine, you ought to consult with your healthcare provider. You want to rule out any conditions that may pose a threat to you and your unborn baby.
Swimming exercises are recommended not only for healthy pregnant women but also for those who had previously lived a sedentary lifestyle or those at risk of chronic hypertension, gestational diabetes, or being obese or overweight.
Wanting a smooth and uncomplicated pregnancy journey comes at the cost of adopting a more active lifestyle routine. You might want to consider an exercise routine that is not strenuous to your body and which enhances your health and that of your unborn baby.
Swimming is that exercise that you can engage in limitedly without putting a lot of pressure on your changing body. Moderate swimming exercises 2-3 times every week throughout your pregnancy will come with a lot of benefits to you and your unborn baby.
Besides preventing you from several potential health conditions such as obesity and hypertension, swimming will keep your baby from harm, help in the development of a healthy fetal heart and prevent cases of preterm births alongside other birth and medical complications.
Takeaway
If you are planning on getting pregnant or already pregnant, don’t hesitate to make swimming a close companion throughout your journey. Assuredly, the benefits will leave you craving for another pregnancy.
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