Motivation Monday! 9m pregnant vs 16m PP

I wanted to give a little motivation to keep up with workouts during pregnancy if possible! Pregnancy is straight up exhausting in every way….but when people say how well your body (can) do during labor and how well your body adjust once you’re postpartum is so true!

I did weight lifting before I was pregnant and tried to continue as much as possible during my pregnancy. I didn’t do CrossFit. Just a regular gym with a barbell and dumbbells! I had some pretty bad sciatic so don’t let me fool you, I took many days off for that reason as well as bad acid reflux. If you know, you know…even looking left or right can take you out lol!

When I went into labor, (this was my first baby) my body progressed extremely fast…like 4 hours…it was a precipitous birth. I’ll say it for all of you, yes bless my soul lol. (Unmedicated too) BUT I am convinced! That my weight training helped keep my baby low in my pelvis and helped me dilate quicker. Now of course, there’s a possibility I could have sat on the 9 for months and had the same experience. There’s no saying!

But there’s more benefits than just a (potentially) quicker birth! My body afterward was able to connect to all of its muscles after losing the weight of a baby in my stomach. If you’ve given birth then you know the weird feeling where you feel empty…you feel like not only have you lost connection to your abdominals but every other muscle? And it happens! But muscle memory is an amazing thing! And before you know it, you can be working out again and your body picks it all back up again! (WHEN you are cleared to go back! Results WILL vary…)

I wrote all of this to say that if you’re pregnant and thinking you may never go back to how you were before (I hope nobody is and I hope you all know how fricking beautiful you are to be pregnant!) that you will and you can! In fact I am more fit and leaner in my postpartum phase than I was before I was even pregnant…NEVER thought that could be me! Just to preface, I have never been super lean so to be where I am shows that hard work does pay off!

I would love to help anyone who needs it whether you’re pregnant right now or already postpartum!

Also I hope this post doesn’t throw anyone off! The point is that working out can help us achieve the goals we have whatever they may be! ❤️