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Delivery mode not altered by pregnancy exercise
Jan 28th
Women benefit from light-intensity resistance exercise during pregnancy and this type of physical activity is not apt to alter the way they deliver their baby, study findings hint.
Regular exercise during pregnancy offers overall health benefits, Dr. Ruben Barakat, at Universidad Politecnica de Madrid in Spain, and colleagues note in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. However, few investigations have focused on the effects of resistance-type exercise during pregnancy and whether this alters actual childbirth.
Therefore, they compared delivery outcomes after supervised toning and resistance exercises for shoulders, arms, pelvis, and legs, plus toning and mobilization of associated joints, in 80 women during mid to late pregnancy, compared with 80 non-exercising peers.
All of the women previously obtained less than 20 minutes of exercise on 3 or fewer days each week, a low level of exercise the "controls" maintained. By contrast, the exercise group participated in 3 weekly toning and resistance sessions of less than an hour each from pregnancy week 12 or 13 through delivery.
There were no adverse effects noted in the 72 exercising women or the 70 controls that completed the study.
And, in contrast to a previous report of increased vaginal delivery associated with regular exercise during pregnancy, Barakat's team found no differences in delivery mode between the groups.
Fifty-one exercisers delivered vaginally, another 10 had a delivery requiring instruments, and 11 had Cesarean, compared with 50, 9, and 11, respectively, in the non-exercisers.
The groups also similarly required epidural anesthesia and had similar average durations of complete dilation and delivery, and their newborns were similarly healthy.
"Women in the training group were rather pleased with the exercise training," Barakat and colleagues note in their report.
This finding, coupled with the exercisers desire to be physically active during future pregnancies, and the lack of exercise complications, supports the overall benefits of supervised, light-intensity exercise during pregnancy, they conclude.
Source
Pregnant Women Going to Hospital Too Early
Nov 25th
Nervous fathers-to-be are pushing their partners into hospital at the first sign of labor even when they would be better off at home, according to a new study.
Midwives recommend women relax at home in the early stages after research found they are more likely to suffer complications if they are admitted to hospital too soon.
But a small study has found that jumpy fathers-to-be and even nervous mothers-in-law are pushing women to go to hospital too soon.
Mary Nolan, professor of perinatal education at the University of Worcester, questioned more than 2,400 first-time mothers about their experience of support from midwives during early labor.
She then carried out in-depth interviews with eight women in Worcester and found they had common views on their partner's influence.
While many of the women talked about how supportive their partners had been, they believed their partner's stress had led them to hospital early, echoing comments from many of those surveyed.
Prof Nolan said: "We are talking about the early stages of labor when women are advised by midwives that the best place to be is at home. It may be a few hours or even days until the contractions are strong enough and women need to go to hospital.
"Men are completely wonderful but they do not have an intuitive understanding of birth like women have - even those women who have not given birth before. Men - obviously because they are so concerned for their partner and their baby - are on edge."
Prof Nolan said midwives were keen for women to stay at home in early labor because research has shown they are more likely to need interventions - such as forceps or an epidural - if admitted too soon.
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