Baby steps: Why new mums, like Meghan, need to take exercise slowly
When Meghan Markle posed for the cameras with her husband Prince Harry and newborn baby last week, she told a truth other famous mothers prefer to hide.
Her white belted dress accentuated her waist and showed the reality of a post-natal figure. Her baby may have been born but her bump was still there, and she made no attempt to hide it. Instead, it seemed as if Meghan was proudly displaying it for all the world to see.
Terezia Foott, of Per4orm Exercise and Wellbeing in Cork, specialises in advanced postnatal exercise and recovery. She hopes that Meghan’s obvious pride in her body’s achievement in delivering a baby translates into her giving that body the care it needs over the following weeks.
“The most important thing that all new mums need to do is to rest, eat and rest some more,” she says.
How they look shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t even be considered.
In recent years, the media has praised the likes of Drew Barrymore, Olivia Wilde and Amanda Holden on having lost their mum tums in a matter of weeks. This has put extra pressure on new mothers, many of whom now feel they should bounce back to the shape they were in before pregnancy just as quickly as the celebrities appear to do. Foott believes new mums need to hear the opposite message.
“Generally, women are pregnant for up to 10 months,” she ways. “The body goes through a lot of changes in that time, but they are gradual changes. The recovery should also be gradual. And if the birth was in any way difficult, it needs to be even more gradual, with the mother requiring extra attention.”
Experts agree that women need a period of rest after pregnancy and birth. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists recommends that women get a doctor or midwife’s approval before resuming exercise. This is usually given six weeks after a vaginal delivery and 12 weeks after a C-section.
If women don’t give themselves this time, it can have detrimental effects on their bodies. “It can mean slower recovery time,” says Foott.
The body will take longer to heal. It could also mean pelvic floor dysfunction — which covers everything from urinary incontinence to pelvic organ prolapse (when the muscles and tissues supporting the the uterus, bladder, or rectum become weak).
Too much exercise too soon can also slow down the healing of the stomach muscles. During pregnancy, these muscles can come under such pressure that they can’t keep their shape — a condition known as diastasis recti.
They separate and, as a result, the uterus, bowels and other organs have only a thin band of connective tissue to hold them in place. This can lead to lower back pain, constipation and urine leakage. It can make it difficult to breathe and move normally. In extreme cases, the tissue can tear, and organs can poke out of the body.
It may sound extreme but Foott has seen many women suffer from diastasis recti in the post-partum period. “They come to my classes to lose their belly after pregnancy but don’t realise that there are no muscles to hold that belly in place,” she says. “It has no option but to stick out.”
Research proves that it’s a common problem for many new mothers. A 2016 study by the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences found that 32.6% of the 300 women it followed suffered from the separation of stomach muscles one year on from having a baby.
New mothers can also suffer from joint injuries if they take part in high-impact or high-intensity exercise too soon after birth. This is because high levels of hormones, such as relaxin, in the body after childbirth, cause ligaments to be more elastic. This laxity can lead to instability, which in turn can cause injury.
Foott understands why so many new mothers assume that they can resume the same exercise routine they had prior to pregnancy. “Becoming a new mum is such a massive change from one moment to another,” she says.
“No one can fully prepare you for what’s ahead and emotionally we all react differently. It takes time to realise that life is never going to be the same as it was before baby. But rather than pressurising ourselves to achieve the ‘old me’, we should give ourselves the time to get to know and embrace the ‘new me’.”
During those first six weeks after birth, the only exercise that Foott recommends is breathing. “Costal breathing (where you move the diaphragm down with inhalation and up with exhalation) resets the normal breathing patterns and mechanisms,” she says.
“Focusing on breathing is probably the safest and most important exercise a new mum can do. If they’re planning on doing anything else, they should seek the help and advice of a professional such as their GP, a women’s health physiotherapist or a holistic core restore coach such as myself.”
Foott’s advice to Meghan is the same as it would be to all new mums.
“Rest, rest, and more rest,” she says. “Every woman is different and a mum whose birth involved no interventions or complications will take a different path in her recovery to a mum with an emergency C-section or a long vaginal birth with a tear or some form of intervention like forceps or a ventouse.
"But mum needs to rest. You’ve just brought a baby into the world. Your body needs time to recover.”
Easy does it
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