Pregnant and pumping iron!
Wednesday 19th November 2008
Lifting the 70kg weight onto my shoulders, I breathed out slowly. 1… 2… 3…
The other members at the Core Cambridge gym watched in shock as I squatted with the weight on my back. You could almost hear the collective intake of breath as a small vein twitched in my forehead. I did six repetitions, then…
'Uuuurgh,' I groaned, before letting the bar crash down.
I'd lifted the weight of a grown man. Not bad for a 5ft 4in, size 8 woman.
But people weren't watching me in astonishment because of my incredible strength. They were staring because the weightlifting bar was skimming my baby bump. It was June 2008, and I was six months pregnant. But I wasn't letting that stop me going to the gym for my regular twice-a-week workout, complete with weights. As far as I was concerned, the fitter I was, the better it was for the baby.
So I just had to put up with the sly glances I got from the other members as I bent down to lift the weighted bar. Did they think I was irresponsible? On some extreme fitness regime like the celebs? Who knows. Because, despite my fears, no one said anything bad about my training.
'I've had so many people coming up to me saying what an inspiration you are,' my personal trainer, Hayley Ginn, smiled as she headed over for a chat.
'Really?' I laughed. 'Why?'
'Well you don't see many pregnant ladies lifting a 70kg weight,' she grinned. 'They think it's great that the pregnancy hasn't made you stop.'
There wasn't much chance of that. Ever since I'd found out I was expecting my first child, back in February 2008, I'd been determined to keep as fit as possible. I'd always been a regular weightlifter and had run a couple of marathons, too. I'd been training for the 2008 Dublin Marathon when I'd discovered I was pregnant.
'I guess I'll have to put the marathon on hold,' I told my partner, Stewart, then 40. 'But
the baby might benefit from a bit of a workout.'
'If it takes after its mum, you're probably right,' Stewart, a chef, had laughed.
The next day, at my regular session, I'd had a chat with my personal trainer.
'The key is not to start anything new,' she'd explained. 'You can continue lifting weights, but stop if you feel any pain.'
My midwife at Rosie Maternity Hospital in Cambridge, Emma Hardwick, had said the same thing a couple of weeks later.
'There's no reason why you can't continue exercising as normal,' she'd told me. 'Your baby's doing well and your blood pressure hasn't altered.'
Great news. And as the weeks had passed, nothing hurt at all. In fact, I'd felt fitter than ever when Stewart and I had tied the knot in the Bahamas three months later, in May.
'You look beautiful,' Stewart had murmured, looking at the bump poking out of my slinky white dress. And I'd felt beautiful, too. All right, so by the time I was six months pregnant, I'd put on a good stone-and-a-half. But it wasn't fat, it was baby weight. One day, just after I passed the six-month stage, I was standing in front of the mirror lifting my weights, when I felt my stomach flutter.
'Hello you,' I whispered, putting my hand over my bump protectively as the baby kicked.
After that, I stopped doing the 70kg deadweights and squats, but still didn't give up completely. Three days before my due date, I was lifting 15kg dumbbells instead.
'I really think it's made me feel more positive about the birth,' I told Stewart. 'I'm hoping it might make the pain easier to bear.'
I'm not saying it wasn't painful when I gave birth to our baby girl, Poppy Amber, at Rosie Maternity Hospital on 28 September 2008.But she was worth it.
As I held our 7lb 7oz baby in my arms, I looked at her fuzz of brown hair and deep blue eyes in awe.
'She's just perfect,' I whispered.
And she hadn't been harmed one bit by my workouts. Now I'm a mum, I know it'll be hard finding time to go to the gym. But I'm determined to go back to weightlifting as soon as possible. My message to other mums-to-be is, don't think that being pregnant means you have to give up doing what you love. I'm proof of that.
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