Should You Exercise During Pregnancy?

Research suggests that if you exercise while pregnant, your baby exercises as well making its fetal cardiac system grow stronger.  Babies born to mothers, who exercised while pregnant, have healthier heart hearts.  For most people, exercise improves your heart rate and moms can help their babies improve theirs.  Women who exercised at least 30 minutes three times a week had fetuses with lower heart rates.  Prenatal yoga and low impact aerobics are popular among mothers-to be. 

Before beginning any exercise program while pregnant, especially if you’re overweight or are new to exercise, talk with your doctor about the best options for you.  WedMD suggests that the safest activities for pregnant women are swimming, brisk walking, indoor stationary cycling, step or elliptical machines, and low-impact aerobics taught by a certified instructor.

Before beginning any exercise program while pregnant, especially if you’re overweight or are new to exercise, talk with your doctor about the best options for you.  WedMD suggests that the safest activities for pregnant women are swimming, brisk walking, indoor stationary cycling, step or elliptical machines, and low-impact aerobics taught by a certified instructor.

“The babies born to exercising mothers continued to have lower heart rates and greater heart-rate variability four weeks after delivery than the babies born to the other women. The effect was especially robust in the children whose mothers had exercised the most, Dr. May said; they had the slowest heart rates and presumably the strongest hearts.” 


Mother and her unborn child have separate cardiac systems and blood circulations but some hormones cross the placenta, and according to Dr. May can be stimulating changes in the developing fetus’s heart.  The fetus’s heart responds to its mother’s and beats with the same rhythm. 


While exercising during pregnancy is a good idea, dieting might not be.  Some research shows that if a mother diets while pregnant, it might lead her child to obesity in later years.  Lack of food in the womb might lead to weight problems later in life.  “An international study, led by University of Southampton researchers and including teams from New Zealand and Singapore, has shown for the first time that during pregnancy, a mother’s diet can alter the function of her child’s DNA.”