When were you able to actively excercise?
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Mikkimeow
Posts: 1,282 Member
Hey there mommas and soon to be's! I am due End of Feb/early March with my first! I am experiencing that never ending grumpiness and aches of the third trimester, but starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel!
My question for you is, when did you get back to exercising and trying to lose weight after having your little one? What kind of work outs did you start out with? I am sure all kinds of variables are involved, such as whether you breastfed/formula fed, natural birth/c section, twins/one baby, stahm/career mom and so on. I would love to hear your stories about how hard it was to start exercising and when you finally felt able to get to work!
My question for you is, when did you get back to exercising and trying to lose weight after having your little one? What kind of work outs did you start out with? I am sure all kinds of variables are involved, such as whether you breastfed/formula fed, natural birth/c section, twins/one baby, stahm/career mom and so on. I would love to hear your stories about how hard it was to start exercising and when you finally felt able to get to work!
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bumping... curious to see answers to this too.0
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Usually about 2 weeks after giving birth. I always had easy births. That being said you have to listen to your dr.0
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Bumping...I'm just curious. I had always "heard" you are supposed to wait until 6-8 weeks after the birth. BUT this is my third, so depending on how Im feeling I may see if I can start back earlier, with my docs ok. I'm maid of honor in my sisters wedding a month after the birth.0
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I started going for longer walks at 4weeks PP. I started Zumba at 7weeks PP. I probably would have started sooner but it felt like my uterus was gong to fall out. Even walking for too long caused a lot of pressure in my lady bits (I had a 9lb baby naturally).
Now I do Zumba 3x per week and go out for walks with baby.
I lost 40 pounds by the time my son was two months old (yay breastfeeding!). He's three months now and I only have two pounds of baby weight left (I think it's all in my boobs - woohoo!).
Everyone's body is different though! Try not to set expectations for yourself until you're there!0 -
I waited three months, was trying to figure out baby and breastfeeding.0
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I started going for longer walks at 4weeks PP. I started Zumba at 7weeks PP. I probably would have started sooner but it felt like my uterus was gong to fall out. Even walking for too long caused a lot of pressure in my lady bits (I had a 9lb baby naturally).
Now I do Zumba 3x per week and go out for walks with baby.
I lost 40 pounds by the time my son was two months old (yay breastfeeding!). He's three months now and I only have two pounds of baby weight left (I think it's all in my boobs - woohoo!).
Everyone's body is different though! Try not to set expectations for yourself until you're there!
Awesome job! I love love love Zumba!0 -
I agree every body is different. By 3 weeks pp, I was pretty much at pre baby weight, but still don't like my composition (body fat % is much higher than I would like).
I had Devon in the Moby carrier and walked 20 minutes roundtrip to a bar/grill the afternoon we were home from the hospital (day three, I think). I definitely felt a little bit like my uterus might drop out and we didn't mean to walk that far. By about 3 or 4 weeks, I was doing super light weights and tiny cardio. I played ice hockey at almost exactly 6 weeks. Unlike Pepper, though, I only had a 7lb 11oz baby. By that 6 week hockey game, I felt pretty much like before pregnancy.
I'm still working on getting my body fat % down. Breastfeeding is helping, because I have been eating an extra 500 calories a day.0 -
I did walks pretty soon after baby was born and starting jogging again at 5 weeks. I waited to do push ups and sit ups until 2 months after baby was born. I wasn't able to breastfeed and still had 25 unnecessary pregnancy lbs to get rid of. The doc prescribed Metformin and I did e-diets for a few weeks starting at 2 months and that's really when I started to lose any weight. It took me 8 months to lose the 50 lbs I gained.0
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Background - I had a vaginal delivery with my first with very serious complications that led to them not allowing me to attempt more vaginal deliveries, so c-section with my second and will have another c with this babe. With that said, I started walking after 1 week, but I was so tired and paranoid with my first babe that I was barely walking for 10 minutes that first week. I picked up the pace with the second, but with a planned c, my recovery was so much easier than the vaginal delivery so I was easily walking 4-5 miles 3 days a week about 4 weeks pp. I didn't start weights and running until my 6 week pp check with both kids. But like others said, I lost most of the weight by a few weeks pp, but my composition was different. With the c, I waited until aorund 14w pp to do any kind of ab work because they sewed my abs back together after the c, so they were very painful for a long time and I didn't want to risk screwing them up permanently.0
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Note that I didn't work out prior to or during my last pregnancy, but I had a 7lb 3 oz baby vaginally with a tiny little tear, and I'd gained something like 65 lbs during that pregnancy.
I didn't walk for the first week or so. I was sore, I was tired and weepy (BFing wasn't going how I wanted it to, and I was crying all the time out of guilt), and it was January. I was BFing and pumping as much as I could and FFing to supplement. By the 2nd or 3rd week PP I put my son in his car seat and put that in the Snap 'n Go (a LIFESAVER) for walks around the neighborhood. I would walk with him for maybe 1/2-hour to an hour, sometimes once in the morning and then in the afternoon. These were far from vigorous walks, as I had enough bleeding PP to call my OB's office (and even had my husband come home early from the office one day in case I passed out or something), so I was a bit of a spaz about that and was trying to take it easy during these walks. Mostly it was about getting out of the house because I felt like a shut-in. My OB's office accidentally scheduled my 6-week PP visit at 5 weeks, and I was cleared for exercise.
I started MFP 2 months PP but didn't really exercise. If we took walks, that was it. I tried jogging, then fast walking, with the jogging stroller and hated it. (Note that the jogging stroller is great for some things but for me jogging is not one of them.) We would go to the park or downtown and walk around for an hour or two, since by this time I had the feeding/diaper thing down pat.
At 7 months PP I joined my sister in Couch to 5K, which really helped my weight loss, and about 9 months PP we started Spinning together, which really kicked it into high gear. I wouldn't recommend either, though, until you're cleared for exercise.
This time I will be more into walking than last time (my son's in preschool, so I'll be home with the baby), but it will still just be walking for the first few weeks.
TL;DR version is that I did light walking around the neighborhood until I was cleared for exercise at 5 weeks PP. You will be somewhat sore down there, and doing anything too vigorous may be uncomfortable. Additionally, you'll be very sleepy and will want to try to get in some naps, too!
Edited to replace the word "naturally" with "vaginally." I did have an epidural (and I don't judge anyone either way), so I guess "naturally" isn't really the right word.0 -
I agree every body is different. By 3 weeks pp, I was pretty much at pre baby weight, but still don't like my composition (body fat % is much higher than I would like).
I had Devon in the Moby carrier and walked 20 minutes roundtrip to a bar/grill the afternoon we were home from the hospital (day three, I think). I definitely felt a little bit like my uterus might drop out and we didn't mean to walk that far. By about 3 or 4 weeks, I was doing super light weights and tiny cardio. I played ice hockey at almost exactly 6 weeks. Unlike Pepper, though, I only had a 7lb 11oz baby. By that 6 week hockey game, I felt pretty much like before pregnancy.
I'm still working on getting my body fat % down. Breastfeeding is helping, because I have been eating an extra 500 calories a day.
I think that's super awesome that you play hockey and did so at 6 weeks PP! I used to play in high school (on a girls' team) and miss it terribly (I'm in the South, so leagues are few and far between, and I'm still not sure that I want to play hockey with men). Honestly I find skating to be a much smoother endeavor than walking, but of course actually playing hockey can be a little bumpy
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This is my first baby, I had a vaginal delivery with a big 2nd degree tear and an episiotomy. I went for my first walk at about 1 week PP. Only 15 minutes and my girly bits were sore for days afterwards. Week 3 I managed to work up to 30 mins, but again, sore for days. I kept walking every few days for a few weeks, usually sticking with about 30-45 minutes at a time. Was cleared for normal activity at 5.5 weeks so I started incorporating 30 Day Shred, but the girly bits still hurt, so I was only able to do some form of exercise every second day. I think it was about week 8 before I really started to feel normal again (the girly bits, the rest of me was back to normal). Tomorrow I'll be 11 weeks PP, I've been doing 30 DS or walking 3 days a week for the past while, and a few days ago I just got back to the gym for the first time. I'm EBFing and don't have any family in town to babysit, so it's easier for me to exercise at home or take baby for walks, but I am working towards getting to the gym more often (when DH gets home from work) because I don't like to pay for a membership and have it go to waste.
I have about 14lbs left to lose (gained 36), but I have more body fat right now than I did the last time I was this weight, so I'm more concerned about inches than the number on the scale at this point.0 -
After my first pregnancy, I didn't really do any formal exercise right away - just pushing her in the stroller through the neighborhood. She was a last-minute c-section, so it took me 6 weeks to get cleared for exercise, and then it was a matter of balancing life with a new baby/going back to work part-time. When she was 3.5 months old, I started doing exercise videos, walking more, and some weights.
My second pregnancy was twins, and a planned c-section (though I went into labor before the surgery date). I did Just Dance on the wii after my 6 week checkup/clearance, but that's about it. This time I was trying to figure out how to balance life with 3 kids under 2!
Again, after 3.5 months, I started exercising more regularly; I ended up choosing to do a 10-week half-marathon training plan (and I was NEVER a runner before this), so it was some pretty hard-core (for me) exercising from that point on. After the half-marathon, I kept up with regular runs and started incorporating weight training (if I'd realized how awesome lifting was before that, I would've started sooner!).
I had a lot more excess weight to lose after my first pregnancy than my twin pregnancy - I actually gained the same amount with both! (Appropriate amount for twins, waaaay too much for a singleton) I got down to pre-pregnancy weight right before getting pregnant with the twins. I got down to LESS than pre-pregnancy weight (and 2 pants sizes smaller) right before getting pregnant this time around (in the same amount of PP time).
Also, in case it matters at all, I breastfed both times, but my body likes to hang onto weight while I'm breastfeeding, unlike some lucky moms out there! :flowerforyou:0
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