As a fun addition to my doula and childbirth education work, I have recently been training to become a pregnancy fitness educator. Pretty soon I’m going to start offering classes for moms who want to stay fit and limber during their pregnancies, and who want a little guidance, as well as a group to join, in order to do it. All of the reading that I’ve been doing as part of this training has made one thing abundantly clear – exercise during pregnancy is (for the vast majority of women) a good thing. Today I’ll be talking about the physical benefits of exercise for mom and baby (mom may be doing the exercise, but everybody wins!) and then in part two of this post I’ll delve into the less well-known, but equally important concept of body trust and why it matters for pregnancy, birth and the postpartum. Continue reading →