Welcome to 2017! Becoming pregnant has advanced in shocking ways in the last 20 years. The number of babies born via in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, surrogacy and more is amazing! But in contrast, maternal care has not changed as rapidly.
Yesterday I was chatting on the play ground after preschool with a friend who was lamenting how after her second child, who is now three years old, she just can not find her abdominal muscles. This is hardly an isolated conversation between moms. I've had this conversation with many moms before. We struggle post-pregnancy to return to our pre-pregnancy workouts without hurting our backs. We lay on our yoga mat cheating our way through the abdominal portion of our old favorite exercise class. We even occasionally categorize our lives in pre and post pregnancy when discussing sports and exercise we enjoy. The crazy part is WHY? Why are we all still having these conversations? We can do better! Why go through pregnancy and never expect exercises to strength our back, pelvic floor and help protect and recover our abdominal muscles after? It is simply because that is what we have been taught our expectation should be. It is well researched that during pregnancy, due to hormones, women's ligaments and muscles become more elastic and the risk of injury increases. It is well known that abdominal weakness, back weakness and pelvic floor weakness (incontinence ladies?) often accompany postpartum. We are not dealing with the unknown. We can change this conversation. We can ask for better.
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January 2019
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