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Nine Months of Strength
Your Guide to a Healthy Baby
By Teri Brown
After Bridson trained for her own birth she realized that giving birth and running a marathon aren't so different. "Giving birth and running a marathon are two of the most challenging things a person will ever do in their life," she says. "Before I went into labor, I foolishly thought that having run three marathons would have prepared me for birth. I thought the pain of labor couldn't be that much worse than hitting the wall in a marathon. Not true. Labor and delivery are so much physically and mentally harder than running a marathon that they aren't even in the same league."
Bridson maintains that you can train for your labor day very much the same way you can train for a marathon. In marathon training, you work on improving your cardio fitness, muscle health and strength, nutrition, etc.
"The same can be done with training for labor and delivery," says Bridson. "You can maintain [or attain] cardio fitness, strengthen the muscles you will need in labor, delivery and new motherhood, do stretches to ease pregnancy discomforts and get your body open and ready to deliver."
You also can do Kegel exercises (tightening the pelvic muscles – the same muscles used to stop the flow of urination – holding and then releasing) and manual perineum stretching to get your pelvic floor and vagina ready for birth. And you can load yourself up on carbohydrates before delivery and bring an energy drink into the delivery room to keep your energy up just the way athletes do during an event.
Bridson says the critical difference between training for a marathon and training for birth is that at all times the growing baby must be considered. "Athletes can push themselves with their eye solely on shaving some time off of their personal best, but moms-to-be must at all times consider what is best for the baby," she says.
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