Pilates and Pregnancy Week 20 – The joys of stretching and finding out boy or girl!!

Welcome back to our Pilates and Pregnancy blog! I’ve got a big announcement to share with you this week – I’m having a baby boy! Going into the ultrasound I was convinced that baby Cumings-Peterson was a girl and so it was quite the shock when the technician told us otherwise.

Baby looked healthy and was squirming all over the place. He weighs 13 ounces and is lying sideways across my abdomen. I’ve definitely felt more movement; especially during the late afternoon and early morning.

This week Carey taught me on the Reformer. We did both Short Spine and Long Spine, which are exercises where your feet come back over your head. Some moms-to-be are wary of doing any inversions, but I checked with my doctor and she said that as long as I was comfortable, it’s safe for me and baby.

I noticed that it was harder for me to get my feet into the straps today because my growing belly was in the way. Once I was in the straps, however, it felt great to stretch out my low back using those two exercises. We did modify Short Spine slightly in that I kept my knees extra wide to accommodate my stomach on the roll back down.

In addition to working on the Reformer, Carey had me do a long series of leg and hip stretches on the High Barrel. Your ligaments relax during pregnancy, which is why pregnant women need to be careful when exercising, but my muscles felt tighter than ever! My hamstrings are especially tight, which Carey said is probably due to the fact that I am tucking my tail bone under to support the new distribution of weight in my body. Needless to say, the stretches felt great.

We wanted to incorporate something blue into this week’s picture, and so here’s a picture of me, halfway through the pregnancy, sitting on a blue exercise ball.

See you next week!