SWIMMING AND PREGNANCY

The time: August 1991. The place: Elizabethtown, Kentucky. As thirty-two-year-old Bonnie Glasgow Rhodes stroked smoothly up and down the fifty-meter pool at the U.S. National Masters Swimming Championships, it quickly became clear that she was right on target for a new world record in the 400-meter individual medley.

The 400 IM is swimming’s most demanding race: 100 grueling meters each of butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle. Stirred on by the roar of the crowd, Rhodes never faltered. When the Austin, Texas, accountant and mother of two finally slammed into the touch pads, she had carved a whopping six seconds off the old record. Not a bad day’s work—especially for a woman who was four months pregnant.

Another record of sorts was set in 1992 by another thirty-two-year-old, Leslie Craven. Leslie, who swims for both fitness and competition, competed in the 200-yard freestyle only two days before giving birth to a healthy eight-pound baby boy (of course, the tuck in her flip turns wasn’t as tight as usual). Three days after giving birth, Leslie was back in the pool again. “I tried to swim every day of my pregnancy,” she recalls. “It felt wonderful—relaxing and soothing.”

Not every pregnant woman, of course, can set a world Masters swimming record, and not every woman will want to swim up to the moment of delivery. But the near-weightless environment of swimming can provide important benefits for virtually every pregnant woman—keeping her muscles toned, relieving the physical and emotional stress of carrying a heavy burden around for several months, eliminating backaches, increasing the flow of oxygen to her baby, and (because her muscles are strong) helping make the delivery easier.

Kimberly Fagan of Tulsa, Oklahoma, had suffered from chronic back pain since her early teens. When she found out she was expecting for the first time, her doctor, fearing that pregnancy would exacerbate her back problems, recommended that she get in the water and swim several days a week. “It was amazing,” she recalls. “Within a week the backaches just disappeared. I felt better when I was pregnant than I did before. It’s been several years now, and as long as I swim on a regular basis, I no longer have any problems with my back.”

No one had to convince swim coach and instructor Judy Bonning, of Coral Springs, Florida, about the benefits swimming provides pregnant women. She had seen them firsthand many times during her coaching career. So when the thirty-seven-year-old became pregnant for the first time, she not only continued her daily swims but started a class for pregnant women. Within weeks she had over thirty women in the program. As word of its success spread, more and more women signed up. “Within a month it was one of the most successful programs we had going,” Bonning recalls. “We had more women signing up than we could accommodate.”

According to Dr. Desider Rothe, clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the New York Hospital—Cornell Medical Center, “Not only is swimming the best all-around exercise there is but it is especially well-suited to the needs of pregnant women.” Dr. Jane Katz, author of Swimming Through Your Pregnancy, explains why this is so: “Swimming helps you enjoy your pregnancy and prepare for labor and delivery by gently toning and strengthening your body. Not only will your labor and delivery be easier, and your pregnancy more enjoyable, but after you give birth your recovery and return to fitness and figure will be quicker.”

Of course you should consult your doctor before swimming through your pregnancy. But only a tiny minority of women should find themselves barred from swimming for medical reasons. In fact, nowadays most obstetricians are aware of swimming’s benefits and encourage a mother-to-be to get in the swim, both for her sake and for the sake of her unborn child.

A recent study conducted by the Melpomene Institute in Minneapolis demonstrated just how dramatic these benefits can be. The study compared three groups of young expectant mothers: those who swam for exercise while pregnant, those who ran, and those who did no exercise at all. The two groups of women who exercised experienced important advantages over the sedentary women: they had easier deliveries, suffered less from postpartum depression, and regained their normal weight and figures much more quickly.

There was, however, one major difference between the swimmers on the one hand and the runners and nonexercisers on the other. This was in the area euphemistically termed by the study negative outcomes. Negative outcomes means spontaneous abortions and still-births. The swimmers had only one fourth as many of these heart-breaking experiences as the women in the other two groups.