Announcing.....

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The next big milestone...

Turns out God has already determined what my next goal is... having a baby - one of the most amazing gifts I could have ever hoped to receive! 

We are totally over the moon, the plan was always to try and start a family after the Olympics, we just didn’t expect it to happen so quickly… I certainly didn’t expect to be pregnant before arriving home from London! Although we didn’t find out until we were home for a week or so I knew something was up. As an athlete you get to know your body pretty intricately and something just didn’t feel right.

One of the things that amazes me most is how quickly your body changes even after just a couple of weeks. For example, before I found out I was pregnant I noticed I was breathing a lot harder during easy runs, I kept thinking “what the heck! I’ve just run at the Olympics, I should be in the shape of my life, why am I breathing so hard!”

All these little things made sense once we found out the great news. I’ve since learned that during pregnancy, your body calls for more oxygen and adapts to meet this need in several ways. An increase in hormones, particularly progesterone, directly affects your lungs and stimulates the respiratory center in your brain which causes you to breathe heavier. Good to know!

I’m still running most days, albeit a lot slower. My doctor has given me the all clear to continue as long as it feels comfortable. So I’ll run for 40-60 minutes at “talking pace”, which means running at a pace that I can comfortably hold a conversation, so I’ve been recruiting running partners from every social circle! I’ve worn a heart rate monitor a few times too, although I don’t believe that heart rate is a great indicator of exertion, especially when you’re pregnant, heart rate can vary so much. The very general advice is to keep heart rate below 140-150 beats per minute… however if I was running with my heart rate at 140 beats per minute I’d be running quite fast… which is not the goal during pregnancy. I’d prefer to focus on making sure I can talk comfortably and that the pace is slow and easy.

I have the added bonus of knowing other female elite athletes who have been through pregnancy, finding out what they did in regards to exercise during pregnancy, what changes they noticed, what to do, what not to do etc, it all helps to make informed decisions on my experience. There are some vastly different journeys- one elite runner I know ran all the way up to the day she gave birth, she also lifted weights at the gym before going into labor. Others have stopped running at 6 months because of the pressure and simply because carrying the extra weight just gets too hard… whatever the story, it seems to me, the message is always the same in regards to running during pregnancy- cut back if you start to get uncomfortable and begin low weight bearing exercise like swimming or stationary bike.

I’ve also picked my mum’s brains about how she went about her four pregnancies. She was also a runner and ran through all four pregnancies. She recalled that with my older sister she ran a half marathon without knowing she was pregnant. And with me, I was born in New York, mum would run around central park most days at 8 months pregnant, people in the park would freak out…apparently it wasn’t the done thing in the 80’s!

Continuing running has helped keep morning sickness at bay, I’ve noticed that the days that I decided not to run I always feel more nauseous.

I’ve had weird food cravings too… dumplings! I recently traipsed three of my girlfriends around the city looking for a good dumpling restaurant… when we finally sat down (after a good hour of walking) one of them asked if I was pregnant what with my “psycho dumpling hankering”, I answered “why, do you think I look fat?”… this throwback answer was one of the best ways to throw people off the scent before we broke the news to everyone. It was gold.

Now that the news is out, I ‘m really enjoying this new season of our lives. It’s a huge shift from the first half of the year that I spent training for the Olympics! Now, the focus is off striving for a childhood dream and on enjoying the gift that is having a baby.

Written by Eloise Wellings for Jock Athletic Ezine
Photography by Bird and Bee Studio