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Jess's Story
"Balancing a newborn and exercising is difficult. Especially when I’m far away from my family."
I try to be as active as much as I can be, and I still go to aerial classes, which is something I did before I got pregnant with Cody. I did stop during the pregnancy because I didn't have access to someone who could teach aerial to pregnant women, although as soon as I was postpartum I started that up again. That is the only exercise I engage in, I haven't gone back to the gym or anything or been to any gym classes purely because of time restraints. But I do take Cody on walks, but that is pretty much the extent of the exercise I do now.
I'm more active than when I was pregnant. Probably due to the fact that the pregnancy was quite difficult for me because I was quite poorly with sickness, especially in the first trimester. Getting up and doing exercise really wasn't on the ‘to do list’ when I couldn't keep food down. I couldn't exercise during the pregnancy and that's why I would say I’m definitely more active now. Also, I have found that it's needed postpartum for good mental health.
Balancing a newborn and exercising is difficult. Especially when I’m far away from my family. My family live about two hours away, so it's not particularly easy to ask, “Can you look after Cody?” So, it relies completely on my partner and he's at work every day, which means I only have the evenings or weekends. Even then it needs to be planned in advance because of how I feed Cody. He’s still breastfed, so I can't leave him with formula because that's not what he’s used to. I need to be there every couple of hours to feed him, so this makes it a bit harder.
I wish I was more active though. I wish I’d looked into more classes that offered exercise whilst pregnant. I did got to pregnancy yoga when I was pregnant and that was really good, but that was only once a week for an hour, and that was it. Otherwise, I couldn't find anything else. I tried to do pregnancy swimming classes but there were none offered around the area at that time. I wish I could go back and maybe see if I could speak to someone about somewhere that does more things. I know there's more out there now because I see it on all the Facebook groups, so maybe it was just that, at the time I was pregnant with Cody, there wasn't as much. But I do wish I was more active, as it would have helped, especially towards the end when things got quite nerve wracking.
It is also way harder to get back into exercise afterwards. I found it really difficult in getting my fitness levels back. Even now, a year postpartum, it’s changed everything - my body shape has changed. I think if I kept going with my activity level then it would have been easier to continue after the pregnancy. I’ve taken a full year off exercise and now I’m only just getting back into. It really is quite difficult and hard to motivate myself to get back into it.