To workout or not to workout?  When they find out they’re pregnant, women are often faced with this question.  Is it good for me?  Is it good for the baby?  Luckily there are some very clear answers, in almost all cases there are plenty of benefits of exercise during pregnancy.

• Women who exercise regularly during pregnancy have more circulatory reserve, which improves their ability to deal with circulatory distress like physical stress, hemorrhage, trauma and anesthesia.
• Women who exercise can deal more effectively with heat stress when she is pregnant than a woman who does not exercise.
• Exercise may actually decrease the chance of both premature labor and the birth of a small baby.
• Continuing or starting an exercise routine does not increase a woman’s chance of going into pre-term labor even if she exercises more during pregnancy than she did before she got pregnant.
• Babies born to women who exercise tend to score higher on tests of general intelligence and oral language skills.
• Exercise can teach a woman how to push.  Barre helps activate the transverse abdominus (TA), the same muscles that are used to push the baby out.  A women’s labor may be shorter if she already knows how to active her TA.
• Exercise can help with back pain.  Because the muscles are naturally stretching to accommodate the baby, they lose their strength and tone, which are important for helping support the back.  By safely working the abdominals in Bump at the Barre®, back pain can be reduced or avoided all together.  Additionally, strong abs help support the baby so that the weight doesn’t just spill forward shifting your body out of alignment and causing pain.  Exercise can also decrease overall symptomatology and pregnancy discomforts such as constipation, fatigue, insomnia, nausea, swelling, urinary incontinence and varicose veins.
• Exercise may help avoid diastasis recti by keeping your abdominal muscles toned even while they stretch so that they don’t stay overstretched and apart (the condition known as diastasis) after childbirth.
• Exercise can preserve and even increase the mother’s metabolic and cardiopulmonary condition.
• Exercise can help promote good posture and body mechanics.  As the baby grows, the mother’s posture changes and her center of gravity changes.  By participating in Bump at the Barre®, the mother can build strength to help counteract some of these postural changes.
• Exercise can assist with a faster recovery from childbirth and can help the woman get her body back faster.
• Exercise can assist in the management of gestational diabetes.
• Exercise can prevent excessive weight gain.  Woman who exercise gain an average of 8lbs less than those who do not exercise. 
• Exercise has psychological benefits.  Exercise can help improve the client’s mood, body image and self-esteem.  It can also help reduce postpartum depression. 
• Exercise can decrease the risk of venous stasis (fluid pooling in lower extremities), deep vein thrombosis, varicose veins, edema and leg cramps.

So if you were looking for a pass for the next 9 months, sorry to say this isn’t it!  Lace up those sneakers ladies and hit the gym or mat or pool!