Exercise

I won't pretend to be a gym rat. I do love being active and being outdoors, but more in the realm of fun/sporty activities like skiing and biking. I will go to the gym in the winter months and do the elliptical for 45 minutes or so and I always feel good when I'm done, but I don't exactly look forward to it ahead of time.

My plan for exercising while pregnant was to try to stay fit, keep the weight gain under control but mostly to get at least 30 minutes of exercise in per day. Some of you who have been reading since the beginning probably remember that I had a breast cancer scare last summer. On a "routine" biopsy (I say 'routine' because I have very dense breast tissue which has led to several mammograms/ultrasounds/cyst checks under the age of 40), and they found some atypical hyperplastic cells, often a precursor to breast cancer. At the time I was pregnant with Peanut (who was later to be miscarriage #2) and scheduled an excisional biopsy (surgery to remove the area as a precaution) for as soon as I hit the 2nd trimester. Once I found out that we had lost Peanut, I moved up the surgery and wound up having a D&E and breast surgery within a 3 week span of each other - needless to say, September 2009 was not a banner month.

Anyway, the report from the excisional biopsy was as good as possible: no atypical cells found at all. However, just having the one bad check has increased my future risk for breast cancer, so from now on I'll be checked every 6 months, alternating a mammogram and MRI. Which is fine by me, I'm all about preventative medicine and if we ever do find something, we'll know we've caught it early.

In my follow-ups since last September, my doctor has drilled into my head three things that drastically reduce your risk of breast cancer: limit your alcohol intake, maintain a healthy/steady weight and exercise 30 minutes a day in any fashion, including walking. She told me that this last one has shown to reduce breast cancer rates by up to 50% and if that's not enough of an incentive to get my butt moving, I don't what is.

So, I've been good about walking 3 miles a day since then, including around this IVF cycle in December. I had been doing the gym before then, but I started to get freaked out about rupturing my precious few follies while stimming so I took a break until after the 6-week u/s and then started walking on the bike path behind my house. However, now that it's both getting hot outside + Bug feels like a giant bowling ball sitting on my bladder and hips, I needed to change up the routine. This morning I went back to the gym and tried this routine: 15 minutes on the elliptical and then lap swimming. I had planned on swimming 10 laps, but I have to tell you, I almost died by the 8th lap. If I had done 10 laps, I think I may drowned. Swimming is hard!!! How did I manage to spend 6 hours a day splashing around in a pool when I was a kid??

Despite my exhaustion, I did like this routine -- I felt like I got a good 30 minute workout without putting too much pressure on my joints. Plus, Bug seemed to enjoy the swimming portion, he was all punchy after I dragged my carcass out of the pool.

I thought I had planned well, packing a bag to take a shower at the gym after the pool, thereby traumatizing the locker room with my big belly, but though I remembered everything else, I forgot my shampoo - d'oh! But I will do this again, definitely not everyday, but I'll try for 3 times a week and see how that goes. Maybe eventually I can even move up to 10 laps ;).