Want to Ease Labor Pains? Try Water Aerobics During Pregnancy

Mothers-to-be often wonder what the day of their delivery will be like. Is there going to be a lot of pain, how will I handle it, and will I need an epidural? Pain is an inevitable byproduct of childbirth, but the degree to which you experience pain will ultimately effect your need (or desire) for an epidural or other pain medication. One way to possibly minimize that pain, and keep in shape during your pregnancy, is to regularly do water aerobics.

Rosa Pereira, M.D. from the University of Campinas, reported that women who are expecting and who have participated in a moderate-intensity water exercise program were significantly less likely to request painkillers during labor than those who did not exercise. However, there were no significant differences between the groups in duration or type of delivery, neonatal outcomes, or cardiovascular capacity.

Dr. Pereira stated, “We’ve shown that the regular practice of moderate water aerobics during pregnancy is not detrimental to the health of the mother or the child. In fact, the reduction in analgesia requests suggests that it can get women into better psycho-physical condition. Therefore, this kind of exercise could be recommended to mothers willing to practice any physical activity during pregnancy.”

Although there are a few safety concerns surrounding physical activity during a pregnancy, the researchers stated that exercises that are water-based are generally accepted to be safer than the conventional exercises because they reduce edema, they prevent increases in skin temperature, and they do not overload the musculoskeletal system.

To explore this issue of water exercises during pregnancy, Dr. Pereira and her colleagues randomized 34 mothers-to-be, average age approximately 25, to perform the moderate-intensity water aerobics for 50 minutes three times per week from approximately 18 weeks of gestation through delivery. They also gathered 37 mothers-to-be, average age 24, to do no exercise during pregnancy. None of the mothers-to-be exercised regularly before the experiment.

The women from both groups underwent ergometric tests on a treadmill once during each of their trimesters to assess their cardiovascular capacity. The physical fitness and oxygen consumption increased similarly in both groups from the first to second trimester and then returned to baseline levels in the third trimester. In both of the groups, their cardiac output increased throughout their pregnancy and peak exercise skin temperature was higher than the resting temperature. The maternal heart rate was similar with both groups throughout the study.

The duration of labor was similar in the group that did the water aerobics (approximately 457.9 minutes) and in the group that did not exercise (approximately 428.9 minutes). A greater partition of the control women in this study had Caesarean sections but the difference was not statistically greater. However, there were fewer women in the group that did aerobics that requested analgesics during their labor. There was also no big difference between the groups in the weight of their babies at birth or in their gestational age.

The authors of the study do acknowledge that the study was limited by the fact that about a third of the women that were in the aerobics group discontinued the exercise program. The dropouts resulted from home affairs, job restrictions, and family constraints.

The researchers concluded that “the regular practice of moderate water aerobics by low-risk and previously sedentary expectant mothers offers no risk to the health of mother or the child.” The researchers did caution that more rigorous exercise during pregnancy has been associated with low neonatal birth weight.