Leading an active and healthy lifestyle before, during and after giving birth is not only important for healthy mums, but also offers significant benefits for their children.
Women who lead a healthy lifestyle and manage their stress with a nutritious and calorie-controlled diet, adequate sleep and regular exercise are not only more likely to get pregnant, but they usually enjoy lower-risk pregnancies and generally have better experiences during labor.
Developing a well-rounded regular exercise routine before becoming pregnant also makes it easier to maintain your activity levels throughout pregnancy and into the postpartum recovery phase, offering additional physical and emotional benefits to new moms and their bundles of joy.
READ MORE | Added Nutritional Support for New Moms to Biogen Pregnancy Pack Omega+
Improved capture rates
Estimates from WHERE suggest that approximately one in six people of reproductive age worldwide experience infertility during their lifetime.
A healthy lifestyle plays a key role in supporting fertility and conception rates in women affecting various hormonal and physiological factors.
For example, eating a balanced diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean protein provides essential vitamins and minerals, including folate, iron, and omega-3 fatty acids, that the body needs for optimal health of eggs, ovulation, and building a healthy uterine lining to support conception.
Our bodies also require fats and proteins to produce the important hormones that affect ovulation and fertility.
And keeping calorie intake in check helps maintain a healthy weightwhich reduces the risk of hormonal imbalances that can disrupt ovulation, as obese2 women are more likely to experience fertility problems.
READ MORE | Fitpregnancy tips every new mom should know
Support your growing baby
Once you become pregnant, Following an active and healthy lifestyle during a normal pregnancy is also extremely beneficialhelping moms prevent or reduce back pain and excess weight gain while preparing the body for labor and delivery.
Importantly for the baby, the choices you make during pregnancy directly affect your developing baby.
For example, exercising during pregnancy can benefit your child’s lifelong health and fitness. Healthy mothers reduce their risk of gestational diabetes and pregnancy-induced high blood pressure, which can cause a condition known as preeclampsia that can put the unborn child at greater risk.
Research3 shows that maintaining a healthy weight during pregnancy is associated with a reduced risk of childhood obesity.
Women who are overweight before they get pregnant and those who gain too much weight during their pregnancy may put their babies at risk of childhood obesity.
A study that followed nearly 2,000 women during their pregnancies until their children were six years old found that children of mothers who gained excess weight during their pregnancies “showed a significant difference in the child’s birth weight and BMI at 6 years”.
Moreover, Obesity increases the risk of pregnancy continuing beyond the expected due date and is associated with labor problems, with induction of labor more common in overweight women.
Pregnant women only need about 300 extra calories a day to take care of their growing baby and avoid excessive weight gain.
In another study4researchers have confirmed that exercise during pregnancy has an epigenetic effect, providing distinct molecular consequences to the unborn child that actually improve the expression of genes in children related to their fitness potential.
Hence, Creating a healthy environment for your child to grow in the womb lays the foundation for better health and fitness for your child later in life.
READ MORE | Get your abs back after pregnancy
A healthy nutritional foundation
Supporting your baby’s development during pregnancy requires enormous nutritional resources from a woman’s body, and breastfeeding requires even more.
Therefore, Optimal nutrition before, during and after pregnancy is vital for everyone. Start by reducing or removing all processed and packaged foods from your diet and focus on eating natural whole foods with nutrients.
A prenatal vitamin, such as Biogen Omega+ Pregnancy Packcontains the vitamins and minerals that women need before, during and after conception.
Available in a 30 day pack, each serving consists of three ingredients – 1 multivitamin and mineral tablet, 1 calcium tablet and 1 omega 3 softgel capsule – which provide Nutrients important for optimum your baby’s development, including omega 3 fish oil, choline, folic acid, iron and inositol.
You can take your daily dose all at once or gradually throughout the day. and the dosage remains the same for multiple (twin, triplet) pregnancies.
READ MORE | 10 Tips to Keep Moms Fit and Healthy
Setting a good example
After your child is born, Maintaining a healthy and active lifestyle is important for many reasons.
Regular exercise and a healthy diet can reduces the risk of postpartum depression and can also speed up the recovery process from natural birth or caesarean sectiononce your doctor gives you the green light to start.
It is important that regular exercise sets a good example and helps instill healthy habits in your child.
An analysis5 who looked at the physical activity levels of more than 500 mothers and preschool children in the UK found a strong correlation between the amount of activity a mother did each day and how active her child was.
The study – the first to show a direct correlation in a large sample of mothers and children – shows this Young children are not “naturally active” and that parents have an important role to play in developing healthy activity habits early in life. According to research findings, children were more active the more activity a mother did.
Similar findings emerged from one study6 that examined associations of physical activity levels between parents and preschool children by gender and weekdays/weekends.
The research team concluded that the Sedentary behavior and physical activity levels of parents strongly influenced those of preschool children, with “maternal influence stronger on weekdays and paternal influence stronger on weekends. Parental activity levels affect girls’ levels more strongly than boys’.
Bibliographical references:
- Dağ ZÖ, Dilbaz B. Effect of obesity on infertility in women. J Turk Ger Gynecol Assoc. 2015 Jun 1;16(2):111-7. doi: 10.5152/jtgga.2015.15232. PMID: 26097395; PMCID: PMC4456969
- Silvestris E, de Pergola G, Rosania R, Loverro G. Obesity as a disruptor of female fertility. Reprod Biol Endocrinol. 2018 Mar 9, 16(1):22. doi: 10.1186/s12958-018-0336-z. PMID: 29523133; PMCID: PMC5845358.
- Haby K, Gyllensten H, Hanas R, Berg M, Premberg Å. A lifestyle intervention during pregnancy and its effects on child weight 2.5 years later. Maternal Child Health J. 2022 Sep;26(9):1881-1890. doi: 10.1007/s10995-022-03395-5. Epub 2022 Mar 6. PMID: 35253077; PMCID: PMC9374787.
- Ferrari N, Bae-Gartz I, Bauer C, Janoschek R, Koxholt I, Mahabir E, Appel S, Alejandre Alcazar MA, Grossmann N, Vohlen C, Brockmeier K, Dötsch J, Hucklenbruch-Rother E, Graf C. Exercise during duration of pregnancy and its effect on mothers and offspring in humans and mice. J Dev Orig Health Dis. 2018 Feb. 9(1):63-76. doi: 10.1017/S2040174417000617. Epub 2017 Aug 7. PMID: 28780912.
- Kathryn R. Hesketh, Laura Goodfellow, Ulf Ekelund, Alison M. McMinn, Keith M. Godfrey, Hazel M. Inskip, Cyrus Cooper, Nicholas C. Harvey, Esther MF van Sluijs; Activity Levels in Mothers and their Preschool Children. Pediatrics April 2014; 133 (4): e973–e980. 10.1542/peds.2013-3153.
- Xu C, Quan M, Zhang H, Zhou C, Chen P. Effect of parental physical activity on preschool children’s physical activity: a cross-sectional study. PeerJ. February 27, 2018; 6:e4405. doi: 10.7717/peerj.4405. PMID: 29503768; PMCID: PMC5833469.
Author: Pedro van Gaalen
When he’s not writing about sports or health and fitness, Pedro is most likely out training for his next marathon or ultramarathon. She has worked as a fitness professional and as a marketing and comms specialist. He now combines his passions in his role as managing editor at Fitness magazine.
