The Vancouver Sun

Pregnant and fit

Dr. Karen Nordahl, a Vancouver-based family physician and co-author of a just released book about exercise and pregnancy called Fit to Deliver says the common fears about exercise during pregnancy are unfounded. " There is no relationship between exercise and miscarriage or premature labour," she says. And as long as women don't try to climb Mount Everest where oxygen is a problem for everyone, there is no danger of depriving the baby of oxygen with a tough cardiac workout. Nordahl quotes a five-year study by Dr. James Clapp, a physiologist in the maternal physiology lab at Case Western University in Cincinnati that found children born to exercising mothers began life with a much easier labour-fewer C section and forceps deliveries and shorter labours. They also had less excess fat as they grew and grasped spatial and motor skills sooner than the children of non-exercising mothers.