Sports and Pregnancy: An Impossible Marriage?

My experience navigating pregnancy while downsizing my “sporty” side

I am a rather sporty person.

The sport I usually enjoy the most is bouldering.

I also love to run, though I am very bad at it. I am very slow and I seem to never really improve. My joints complain every time I try to push a bit harder. Still, it does wonders for my mind.

Every once in a while I also try to add some yoga routine to my weeks, but without any consistency. I would join a course for a couple of months, and then forget about it for a year or so.

Since I discovered I was pregnant, I assumed I would continue being sporty throughout all nine months.

I had seen some of my friends continuing to be active while their bellies were growing and changing shape — and enjoying the process. I admired them even more because of that.

I thought I was gonna do the same.

However, my pregnancy turned out a bit different.

In the first two months, funny symptoms like a dizzy head, blurry vision, bloating, nausea, low pressure (leading me to almost collapse in a number of public spaces), and an amount of tiredness that greatly exceeded anything I ever imagined or was prepared for, puzzled me so much that I immediately slowed down.

I basically stopped all activities, to just get a handle on my new body.

Towards the third month, there were finally days when I would feel good again. I went back to a little bit of running here and there and made a couple of attempts in the bouldering gym.

Most people would simply tell you: don’t boulder if you are pregnant. Falling is a possibility, and it can be dangerous for your baby. (There is certainly a little bit of truth in there.)

However, I would add — only you know yourself. If you are trained and highly used to this type of movement, you have a good understanding of what you can do with close-to-zero risks and whatnot. Just the same as with walking, biking, driving a car…

So, I came back to bouldering, with the decision to stick to routes one or two grades below my usual, developing on not-to-high walls, and with the possibility of climbing down instead of jumping.

But I soon realized that half of the fun was already gone by implementing those rules. I also have to admit my ego was aching when I saw groups of people gathering around some problem, where I could be thinking: Ah! I would probably be able to pull that off. But I can’t. I can’t show them.

Also, I was telling myself that I should pause before any move that wasn’t 100% obvious, climb down, and look at the route again.

However, the instinct to do otherwise turned out to be very, very strong.

At the start of each route, my mind would switch to its hyper-focused-climbing-brain modality and I would forget, once again, that I was pregnant. I would just climb directly up to the summit, every time.

The risk was — yes — minimum because it is nearly impossible for me to fall on such low-grade routes. Still, it was already more than what I was willing to accept.

I sadly decided I would resume this activity later on when I wouldn’t be carrying another fragile little human on the wall with me.

Meanwhile, with the end of winter approaching, I felt my usual desire to go back to wearing my running shoes and hitting the road. I even had new, amazingly soft, and light shoes — in fluorescent Barbie color, before that was even a thing!

Anyhow, I soon realized my exhaustion and lack of exercise was such, that I couldn’t manage jogging for more than 10 or 20 minutes. Also, I didn’t want to push myself too much, in order not to get a tightened belly.

Finally, on a sunny spring day when I could see signs of my exhausted, bloated, and nauseated period being over, I managed to pull off 5k.

It seemed promising: maybe I was about to get back to some real running. Maybe it wasn’t going to be a nine-month descending curve, after all.

I came home and ate some lunch, happy about my exercise-stimulated hunger. Happy that the first trimester was almost over.

However, while I was sitting at the table, I suddenly felt a very warm sensation along my thighs. I looked down: they were covered in blood.

That was the beginning of my “total bed-rest” period and one of the most scary phases of my life.

Would I lose my baby? Was it my fault? Would I ever go back to have a normal life, even just to work, before all of this is over?

I was alone in my flat, far from my partner and family, mulling over these thoughts. And trying to figure out how to pull together lunches and dinners despite the prescribed immobility.

The nightmare lasted for five weeks.

During the sixth week, when the blood was mostly reabsorbed, but against my doctor’s prescription, I slowly resumed walking.

In fact, I wouldn’t have been able to switch from that horizontal immobility to my everyday life in a single day — by that point I was risking collapsing every time I even just entered the shower, to such an extent had my blood pressure fallen!

Soon after that, I was free again.

Of course, I knew immediately I was so traumatized that I would never try running during my pregnancy again — even if my placenta was in a better position and things were more stable now.

Going back to work, going back to walking and sitting, was enough.

Sometime after that, I felt good enough to give sports another try. Apart from my trauma, there were no reasons anymore for me to hold back.

So, I found an online yoga course.

Every week the teacher would start her lesson — with very bad audio, and in a pastiche of two different languages — and I immediately would feel lost, trying to understand what she was saying or doing, and rushing to follow her in the incredibly fast sequence of up and down, standing and lying positions.

It was for sure the most intense yoga course I ever participated in. Moreover, my bed-rest period had gifted me with a very low resistance to any cardiovascular efforts. Also, my growing belly was in the way.

So, things would sometimes get painful. I would stop midway during a flow, looking at the screen with an angry expression, and pushing back the tears in my eyes.

Towards the end of the course — I had just broken up with my partner— once or twice I think I literally cried in front of my laptop, halfway through those confusing yoga classes.

When the course ended, I was incredibly relieved.

The weather was at that point sunnier and warmer, and I still hadn’t given up on the idea of doing at least some kind of sport during my pregnancy.

After an unsuccessful attempt at joining a zumba course, which resulted in me forgetting about all but the first class, taken by all my appointments with psychologists, social workers, and legal consultants, in order to figure out my future single mom’s life, … a new “sporty” thought appeared in my mind:

Maybe I can switch to commuting by bike, as I do every year? After all, most of my commute happens on a safe cycling route… So, no dangers, really.

However, I soon had to recognize that my 30-minute commute was now monstrously transformed into a 50-minute commute.

Magic of pregnancy! That was indeed a bit too long.

Moreover, having a laptop inside my backpack was not an okay weight anymore. Under it, my uterus couldn’t relax. The computer had to be moved between work and home every morning and every evening, though.

I quickly went back to my train commute.

Suddenly, the summer had started. And it was very, very hot.

It was clear that I needed to be around water — any water — to simply survive. So, I resumed my “traditional” summer swimming.

I went to the swimming pool once (it was too crowded), and then several times to the river.

I established an evening routine of slowly cycling to my favorite spot, undressing, and then walking into the water, with my orange floating buoy around me to signal my presence. Sometimes it would be just a refreshing splash, sometimes a true swim.

I still do that — around two times per week.

In the water, I feel as agile as usual. My extra kilos suddenly disappear.

I can do the same movements I was doing before getting pregnant — just for a shorter time — until the shortness of breath catches me again.

I now accept that this is all that I’m left with, in terms of sports, and I feel very at peace with the idea. It is still a very good sensation, that of being free of my weight and limitations for a moment.

In fact, my body is not as flexible nor fast as before.

It is much heavier, and it also looks different. Not just the belly, I mean.

My boobs are different: larger but less sexy, I find. Even my legs, which have in theory nothing to do with growing a baby, have slightly changed shape, and there’s much more cellulite on my thighs.

Curiously enough, I don’t care.

I am kind of in awe of how a body can change function and shape so drastically and so fast. (I also tend to think that the extra cellulite will soon go away, as fast as it came, but there I might be fooling myself a bit.)

I have an extra month to go with my baby inside me.

Then, many months of readjusting to being alone in my body will follow. Maybe I will be back to being sporty, maybe not (or just not immediately).

Right now, none of this seems really important.

After eight months, I seem to finally have accepted that there are no more or less admirable ways to go through a pregnancy: lots of sports, zero sports, a bit of sport. It is all okay. Really.

Whatever feels good — that’s the perfect thing to do.

Read more about pregnancy by inthewaves: