Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 57, April 2014 | Page 29

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RUNNING After Baby

T

•

will mean that you will also need to wait until the
wound has fully healed.”
BREAST MILK: “Training too hard or putting your
body under stress will decrease a mother’s breast
milk. Your routine should revolve around creating
more breast milk.”

GETTING STARTED
The latest craze is to take your baby with you in a
running pram, and this can be great fun, although
hard work on the uphills. It is important to take it slow
to start off with, as your baby doesn’t have much of
an immune system in the first six weeks and can be
susceptible to flu and colds. Any exercise should be
started off gradually, and not to the level you trained at
before your pregnancy. “You need to listen to your body,”
says Dr Venter, “you also need to be sure to invest in
good support bras, as in this time you also stand a
good chance of stretching your Cooper’s Ligaments, the
connective tissue in the breasts.”

•

here are many aspects to take into account after
having a baby, and how easy, or difficult, it could be to
get those running shoes back in action. “For starters,
most women feel out of sorts after having a baby, due
to their fluctuating hormones,” say Dr Venter, a former
gynaecologist and now a Reproductive Medicine Specialist
at Vitalab in Morningside, Johannesburg. “During
pregnancy, the levels of progesterone in a women’s body
are at their highest level. Progesterone has a calming
effect on the brain and once you have your baby the
progesterone drops straight down to what it was before
you were pregnant. This is when some women suffer from
what they call the ‘baby blues,’ or Postpartum depression.”

Dr Venter says that women should give it six
weeks before getting out on the road again, for a
number of reasons:
•
CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM: “In the first six weeks
after your baby has arrived, your resting heart rate
is increased by 15 beats a minute. Due to this, you
are also short of breath. Therefore, if any training
takes place, it needs to be extremely gradual, and
also needs to be monitored.”
•
JOINT LAXITY: “During pregnancy, your body
releases a hormone called Relaxin. It loosens
connective tissue, including ligaments that connect
bones and help support our joints. This increased
laxity allows for expansion of the rib cage, making
room for the growing fetus, as well as allowing
the pelvis to expand in order for the baby to be
delivered. Up until six weeks after the baby, your
laxity levels in your ligaments and joints is still high,
so by putting too much stress on the body, you can
pick up injuries easier, and it is also common to feel
sharp pain or discomfort in your lower back.”
•
BIRTH PROCEDURE: “After having a cesarean done,
you need to go for your six-week post-birth checkup
and your doctor will then be able to indicate
whether you are ready to start training. It is vital
that the wound heals properly before putting stress
on the body. A natural birth will have you training
a lot quicker, unless you experienced a tear, which

Images: iStock

Having a child is one of life’s greatest joys,
but childbirth can definitely compare to an
endurance event. Despite childbirth being
a natural process, your body is still put
under stress and physiological changes
occur, so we asked Reproductive Medicine
Specialist Dr Chris Venter to give us his
expert advice to help new mothers get
back on the road. – BY NICOLE DE VILLIERS

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2014/03/11 4:07 PM