Sarah Brown, a professional American middle distance runner, gave birth last Friday after training throughout her pregnancy, and is now set to compete at the Olympic Trials in July. Brown, 29, was on the pace for the best season of her career by early summer last year when she became pregnant, in spite of being on an intrauterine device for birth control. After being assured by doctors that exercise would not harm her child, Brown resumed her training. “There was a theme: ‘You’ll know if you’re doing too much’ and I never felt like I was putting myself in a position that I was doing that,” says Brown. Asked about doing sprints in her third trimester, she compared the feeling to running with “a bowling ball on my stomach.”
Sarah Brown training. (@sarahmb15/Instagram)
In the early 1980s, conventional wisdom dictated women should be as sedentary as possible and eat as much as they wanted, according to Dr. Raul Artal, a professor and chair emeritus at Saint Louis University’s Department of Obstetrics/Gynecology and Women’s Health. Artal wrote the first guidelines for exercise and pregnancy in 1982 on behalf of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, but recent studies led by Artal have found that physical activity during pregnancy is not only not bad for mothers, but beneficial. “I think it’s a positive message,” said Artal. “Women with uncomplicated pregnancies should be encouraged to engage in aerobic and strength-conditioning exercises.”
Read the full story at The Washington Post.
