Minus Related Pages. Physical demands lifting, standing, bending Heavy lifting, standing for long periods of time, or bending a lot during pregnancy could increase your chances of miscarriage, preterm birth, or injury during pregnancy. What are physical demands? Physical factors can include: Lifting heavy objects e. Jobs involving very high physical demands, for example bending at the waist more than 20 times per day or lifting objects more than once every 5 minutes, may increase risks for some adverse birth outcomes: We know that prolonged standing or heavy lifting can cause an increased chance of miscarriage or preterm delivery premature birth.
Pregnant women are at higher risk of an injury while lifting due to differences in posture, balance, and an inability to hold things close to the body because of her changing size. This admonition against standing for more than five hours should of course apply not only to women who are working outside the home, but also to those who do their work at home, managing their household chores and children.
They all should be off their feet and resting every few hours. What about lifting heavy objects? Is it true a pregnant woman should not lift anything heavier than 25 pounds?
Not completely true…. So if she lifts a heavy load she can injure herself, but will probably do no harm to the pregnancy or the baby. There are no studies that show that lifting more than 25 pounds has an effect on birth weight or prematurity.
The current recommendation is that the maximum load a pregnant woman should lift in late pregnancy should be reduced by 20 to 25 percent from that which she was able to lift in her pre-pregnancy state. What about strenuous physical work? A salesperson, a construction worker, a chef, a surgeon and a homemaker may have strenuous jobs, stand a lot and feel exhausted at the end of the day, but obviously there are tremendous differences.
Also, we have to remember that for some, work may entail additional risk factors such as extreme physical exertion, heat, noise and environmental toxins. Nor does work in pregnancy necessarily mean outside the home; it can be just as or more strenuous in the home, especially if a pregnant woman has to care for other children and has no help or emotional support.
Studies that have tried to look at a combination of all these factors show a general increase in prematurity and a slight decrease in birth weight with strenuous work that requires long hours. But the same studies also show that taking a defined rest period every four hours and having time off during the month decrease the incidence of pre-term birth in women, especially if the job requires manual labor.
What about standing, lifting or exertion in high-risk pregnancies? Being pregnant at work. Is it safe to move furniture while pregnant? Is it safe to be on my feet all day while pregnant?
Pregnancy-safe tea. New to BabyCenter? Join now. Password Forgot your password? Keep me logged in. Log in. Get the BabyCenter app. Download now. See all in Getting Pregnant. Napping Ages 2 to 3 See all in Child. It made me so upset. We consulted Battles along with some other experts to figure out how you can stay active without putting a growing fetus in jeopardy.
In all the meta-analyses and expert opinion papers on the topic, there are some broad strokes that everyone can agree on. There are ways to keep going safely, and more importantly, there are good reasons to go for it. Several review articles on the topic note that an oft-overlooked benefit of exercise during pregnancy is improved mental health. So even though her first trimester was tough—she was tired all the time and barely sleeping—she stuck with exercising.
Even non-athletes get mental health benefits. One review of pregnancy and exercise notes that pregnancy makes those who have suffered depression more likely to experience it again, and that between 10 and 30 percent of patients get depressed during their pregnancy—more than in the postpartum period.
0コメント