23 : Workouts + Nutrition During My Two Pregnancies

I’m sharing everything: what I ate (this will shock you), my training schedule, and how I had to scale back. Two very different pregnancies, two very different stories.

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Transcript

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In today's episode, I will be talking through my pregnancy with Rafe, my four-year-old, and my pregnancy with Vance, my one-year-old. I'm going to be talking through both my exercise and my nutrition and what that looked like during those pregnancies. I'm not gonna give a full birth story. This episode outline just didn't have room for that. I might do that in a future episode, but this is mainly just going to be the pregnancy itself. And in this episode, I mentioned my pre- and postnatal programs. If that's something that you are interested in, I do have a program for prenatal called Fit Pregnancy. It's available on my website. I will also link to it in the show notes. It's 32 weeks of workouts tailored to each trimester. It has focuses on pelvic floor and deep core for a smoother pregnancy and then recovery thereafter. It also has birth prep techniques to help with labor and delivery, as well as guidance on detecting common pregnancy issues like diastasis recti, low back pain, felt pelvic floor dysfunction. And then there's also some mobility and stretching to ease your aches and pains during pregnancy. That's the fit pregnancy program. I also have a back to you program, which is a postpartum fitness and recovery guide from weeks zero through weeks 42 postpartum. So, like I said, it takes you step by step for safe postpartum recovery, return to exercise. We have three progressive phases. It's also focused on pelvic floor and reconnecting your deep core as well as that mobility and stretching just to improve movement and reduce pain as well. Both of those programs come with a 22-page PDF guide. And then if you want both of them, both the pre and postnatal program, I have a motherhood bundle that is a little bit more discounted than if you were to buy each of those individually. I am pregnant right now and trying to stay active with weights and running. I would love to hear an episode of both your pregnancy journeys and how you navigated fitness and your eating, what you adjusted and what you didn't adjust, and just what your weeks looked like. She said, I love your podcast so much. I've literally listened to every episode so many times. So thank you so much for this suggestion. And even though I'm not necessarily in a podcast rut yet, I loved this idea and I had planned on speaking about my pregnancies at some point anyway, so I thought this was a perfect opportunity. So I'm just gonna dive right in. For both of my pregnancies with Rafe and Vance, we waited to find out the gender until they arrived. I cannot recommend this enough. Just the excitement and the anticipation around it all is something that I can just never explain. So if you've ever considered leaving the gender a surprise until they get here, you should absolutely do it. Eric and I have just decided we're gonna do it for every kid. So without further ado, I'm gonna dive right into my pregnancy with Rafe. So for those who don't know, I'll start out by saying Rafe is now almost four and a half years old. And Eric and I struggled with infertility for several years before I got pregnant with Rafe. And the first time that we even went to the fertility clinic, I think was in the fall of 2017. It might have been 2018, but I'm pretty sure it was 2017. And we did a few rounds of fertility medication followed by fertility shots, and those were unsuccessful. And then we also did a few IUI procedures, which is like a step down from IVF, but nothing worked. And then we actually decided to take a month off from treatments, and then we got naturally pregnant with Rafe in March of 2021. And I say naturally pregnant, and I only say that because we were not actively in the midst of a month of those fertility treatments. But they say that sometimes those medications can stay in your system for, you know, another month. So that could have helped things, but we were not in the midst of a month of treatments. And so we did get pregnant naturally. And I was actually at one of my fitness peaks the year leading up to getting pregnant with Rafe. So as we all know, with everything when it shut down in 2020, I spent just a ton of time outdoors or just like I was doing random things that I would have never done if I wasn't forced to uproot from a normal routine because of the pandemic. So that year in 2020, I decided to train for a sprint triathlon, which is the shortest distance for a triathlon, but it still includes the swim bike run. And I was a terrible swimmer, so I actually hired a swim coach and I had never even cycled on a road bike, and so I like bought my sister's old road bike, and I both ran and biked at Oak Mountain State Park, which at the time it was only one exit away from where we lived, and it just had the most beautiful views, wide bike lanes. It it was just a fun time of my life. And so I wasn't running any long distances, but I was doing what they call brick workouts, which include a longer bike run followed immediately by taking off into a run. And then I got also connected with some other people locally who were kind of training the same way. And so we would train together and it was just so much fun. And I think back on that time in my life, you know, before kids, when I could just go on a bike ride in the middle of the day because I worked from home and I could really complete my work at any time during the day. So, all that to say, I was at a peak level of fitness before I got pregnant with Rafe. But then ironically, because of the pandemic, that sprint triathlon ended up getting canceled. So I never even got to complete it. Around the same time that the triathlon was canceled, some gyms began opening back up again. So I kind of lost my desire to continue swimming and biking as much. So I went back to my former routine before I started training and before the pandemic. So that was four days of strength training per week and one conditioning day. I was also teaching, like I said, group fitness classes. So that was my routine when I got pregnant with Rafe. I was solely strength training, two upper body days, two lower body days, and then I would just kind of occasionally do the stairmaster after a workout too. And then I would teach fitness classes on top of that. And at the time, I had transitioned out of teaching Les Mills branded group fitness, and I was into more of a coaching approach where I was kind of walking around during the class, coaching versus doing the workout with them and coaching, like you do in Les Mills. During my first trimester with Wraith, I started getting sick at week six of pregnancy and it extended through week 13. And I vividly remember the nausea subsiding around week 13, and then it was totally gone by week 16. But I also remember how miserable nausea is. And at this point, I was already in an early morning routine. I started early morning routines back in 2018, so I was already a few years into that routine. And when I talk about my nausea, it wasn't necessarily morning sickness like everyone coins it. Mine would actually hit later into the day or later into the morning around 10 a.m. or so. There were a few mornings I remember in particular where it was early on in pregnancy. It was like between weeks six to eight, where I was experiencing sickness, but no one knew I was pregnant yet. And so I was getting to the gym to set up my class and I was coaching at between 5 and 5:30 a.m. And I just remember that I was feeling so sick. And I went in the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror and I was pale as a ghost. I just knew I was gonna throw up during the class. And someone from my class, once again, they do not know I'm pregnant, they came up to me and they're like, Are you okay? You look, there's something off. And I was like, Oh yeah, I'm I'm fine. But then before the class started, I walked to over to the trash can and just kind of stood there because I was like, I'm for sure about to throw up. But I never did. And there were only a few mornings like that. But like I said, for the most part, the sickness didn't hit around 10 a.m. or so, and it was like clockwork. It was absolutely clockwork. I could almost look at my watch at 10 a.m. and boom, the sickness would hit. But the positive thing about that is that I was able to stick to my morning workout routine with minimal issues. But the downside is that I was then pretty miserable with nausea for about five of the eight hours that I was working during the day for my, like I said, work-from-home job at the time. And when I got pregnant with Rafe, I was working fully remote for a startup tech company. The great thing about being fully remote was that I had access to my fridge and pantry. So if I felt the sickness come on, I could just go grab something immediately to try and fend it off. And like I said, it was started around 10 a.m. every day. And my go-to whenever I got sick was peanut butter crackers and a ginger ale. And if you expected something more healthy, then you clearly have not experienced pregnancy nausea before. You will just grab whatever is in front of you. And I will say that first trimester, Carly, has very few rules other than just survive in advance. And while I was definitely nauseous, I never once threw up with either of my pregnancies, which is still wild to me. But also, I don't know what's worse. You know, throwing up and having a little bit of relief before another wave of nausea hits, or just being nauseous for several hours and having zero relief. I don't know which is worse. But I would grab some peanut butter crackers and a ginger ale and I would consume that as quickly as possible, which would help a little bit, but not much. Um, and I also did not consume a high protein diet for those several weeks. And I tried, trust me. And when I say I didn't consume a high protein diet, I'm talking about what I was used to. You know, I'm I eat very high protein, at least one gram per pound that I weigh. And so it was nowhere close to that. But I did go into every day with the best of intentions to eat a lot of protein, and it just fell very short from what I was used to. And I'm not kidding you, I could not even look at a chicken breast without wanting to gag. I couldn't cook meat, I couldn't look at meat without wanting to gag. But there was one exception to that, and that was a Chick-fil-A number one meal. Like, I could absolutely crush some fried chicken. But if you put like a slippery grilled chicken breast in front of me, I would want to hurl. I could not do it. Like, I cannot tell you how many times my car was in that Chick-fil-A drive-thru first trimester. I kept that place in business. There was just something about Chick-fil-A that would check the box for me every single time. Like it just sounded good every day. And you would think that that would stress me out. That, like, okay, she's eating fried chicken and French fries every day. But honestly, it didn't. Like, I think if I had been nauseous my entire pregnancy, I would probably have started stressing a little bit just because of the lack of nutrients. But also nothing nutrient dense sounded good to me when I had morning sickness. And I know that so many of you can relate. And hopefully that allows you to breathe a sigh of relief hearing that a fitness and nutrition coach had zero desire to eat anything nutrient dense during her pregnancy. Also did not eat super high protein first trimester either, because high protein didn't sound good. Vegetables wanted to make me gag. I didn't even want fruit. Everything except processed carbs and carbonated drinks sounded gross to me. So for about seven to eight weeks total, from week 16, sorry, week six pregnant through week 13, my diet consisted of just that processed carbs, bubbly drinks, and iced coffee. I forgot to mention iced coffee. I could not stomach hot coffee almost my entire pregnancy. And so iced coffee just became a go-to. In my head, I had I just had this feeling that the nausea was not going to extend my entire pregnancy. And I don't know why. I, you know, some people are sick their entire pregnancy, but I just had this feeling like this is short term. So I think that's another reason that I wasn't stressed because the habits that I had prior to pregnancy were solid habits, and I knew that this was just a blip in the road. You know, it's a drop in the bucket when you look at the whole timeline of your life. And the few protein items that I could stomach were, like I said, fried chicken, but also more what you would consider processed protein sources, like shakes and bars. And obviously, like we don't want our entire diet to be made up of processed protein sources, but leaning on them more during my first trimester is another thing that saved me because once the nausea hits, you feel like you just need something so fast to get rid of that nausea. And since the processed protein sources were easy to grab and they sounded appetizing, those were a go-to for me. And a few other things that helped me get some protein in and were things that I could actually stomach. One was putting Fairlife chocolate milk in my coffee. So I mentioned that hot coffee gave me the ick first trimester, but I could handle iced coffee. So I would get either that stock cold brew or Starbucks um cold brew, and I would mix it with Fairlife chocolate milk for an iced coffee in the morning, so that would get me a few grams of protein. Also, I loved higher protein mac and cheese. So I would buy the Goodles brand of mac and cheese, and I would mix regular Fairlife milk in to boost some of the protein. And one thing that I've thought of outside of pregnancy, like I'm definitely gonna do it whenever I get pregnant with baby number three, is that um I could have combined like some cottage cheese and some fairlife milk in a blender and mix that up and use that as a mix-in for the mac and cheese. That would have gotten me another big chunk of protein if I did that. So that's an idea for you. And then on a wild occasion, I could stomach some yogurt, but I would need to have a ton of fun toppings like granola and then throw a few berries on top if I could stomach the berries. But like I said, on a wild hair, I could stomach a yogurt. Okay, now we need to talk about exhaustion first trimester. Oh my goodness. Okay, at the time, obviously, I didn't have any kids yet. This was my first pregnancy, and so I was working from home and I would be so tired after work that I would fall asleep on the couch immediately after. And then I would get up and go teach my workout class in the afternoon, and then I would come home and fall asleep shortly after that. I was just so tired, and I also had no other, you know, big responsibilities other than my job, which allowed for more naps. So although I felt like I was in survival mode some days and my diet was really different, and I felt tired all the time, I still knew, okay, this is just a blip in the road. And I have to insert this embarrassing and hilarious story here. So I mentioned that first trimester, all I wanted was processed food and processed carbs, and I was also teaching nighttime workout classes. I think when I say a nighttime, I was like a 5:30 class. So I was teaching afternoon classes, and this story, this exact scenario, actually happened on a few different occasions. So the gym that I was teaching at, it was right beside a little Caesars pizza joint. And let me just tell you, my death row meal would be pizza. Okay, like that's how much I love pizza. So I would pull up to my workout class and I would see that little Caesars, and I would immediately want pizza. So this is what I would do. I would finish my workout class at the gym, and then I would get in my car and I would drive my car down the parking lot, like 20 spots down to where that little Caesars was, and I would go in and I would get me a hot and ready pepperoni pizza. But the reason that I moved my car 20 spots away is because I did not want my workout class leaving the gym and seeing my pregnant self march across that parking lot with a pizza box right after I just finished teaching an exercise class. And I'm actually dying at this memory because it's so funny, and it just summarizes first trimester for me for both pregnancies. And now keep in mind, I am not a nutrition coach at this point in my life. This is back in 2021, but I clearly know what my body needs. It needs protein, it needs vegetables, fruits, whole grains, fiber, healthy fats, water. And here I am wanting literally anything but that. So trust me, if your first trimester sounds anything like mine, you're going to be okay. I promise you. And I think, I think when women don't already have solid habits established pre-pregnancy, is when I see the most downward spirals because they weren't making the best decisions for their health already, and then they get pregnant, and now their habits are feeding into another human. Plus, they have the added nausea of first trimester compounded with the weight gain that comes with all pregnancies. And I think all of those reasons are why a lot of women spiral. It's like they're, you know, so excited to be pregnant. They're so excited for this miracle of life. But simultaneously, it's kind of an O-crap moment for them because their body weight and their body composition prior to pregnancy was already not where they wanted it to be. And now, for the most part, any major body recomposition goals they had are now put on hold. But the women who I see most often crush pregnancy are those who already had a super solid foundation of regular exercise and mindful nutrition. So do not wait for pregnancy to be your, oh shoot, now my goals are on hold kind of moment. Let it be a season of life that you allow yourself to enjoy and you can still stay active even through all the changes that your body is going to experience. And I swear I am someone who the second I get pregnant, I feel like I have a baby baby bump. I mean, the second I pee on the stick, I swear I show. And I think a large part of that is that I just don't carry a lot of body fat in my torso area. And the large L-A-R-G-E majority of my body fat is held in my lower body. So I show a bump very quickly. And like I said, I crave nothing healthy from weeks six to 13 during pregnancy. And because my preference for processed foods, I am most likely consuming a lot more calories than I was pre-pregnancy. And I say most likely consuming more calories because I have personally, this is just personal preference, chosen to not track my macros during either of my pregnancies. So because I have not tracked my macros through either pregnancy, in reality, I have no clue how many calories I'm consuming first trimester. But I also know that a Chick-fil-A number one meal is 840 calories for just the sandwich and the fries, no sauce, nothing extra. So I gotta be eating more of the maintenance during first trimester for sure. So the combination of, like I said, I have a lean torso, plus I'm eating a ton of high-processed foods, therefore higher calorie, plus I'm pretty sure I'm eating in a surplus, meaning a calorie surplus. I just develop a lot of bloat in my midsection very quickly. And it's obviously not a baby bump that early on, but it's just a combination of all of that, plus just the changes that my body is going through. So, like I said, I got pregnant in March of 2021. And as I mentioned, I was lifting weights four days a week and I was doing one conditioning workout and I was teaching group fitness classes. And then in September of 2021, Eric and I sold our house and we moved into my parents' lake house, which is in another part of Alabama. And the area that we moved to was very secluded. So there was only one local gym nearby, and I just really didn't care to go to that gym. So we began to buy some home workout equipment. This is when we really started accumulating more equipment. Um, we moved to the lake. And we only owned a set of 10-pound dumbbells and a set of 30-pound dumbbells, and then we also had a barbell and some barbell plates. That was it. So over the next few months, we slowly bought more equipment and then we developed a decent dumbbell collection or at least everything that we needed to, you know, get in a decent workout. So from September of 2021 through December, when I had rave, so six months pregnant through nine months pregnant, I only worked out in the garage each morning. And never in a million years did I ever think I would grow to love working out from home. I was the person who used to thrive in that busy 5 p.m. post-work crowd at the gym. And then, like I said, I switched to early morning workouts back in 2018. And then I just thrived in that environment, seeing my morning gym people and having my morning workout classes. I did both morning and afternoon workout classes at one point in my life too. So working out from home was never something that I ever imagined myself doing. But from September 2021, when we moved to the lake through March 2024, when we ended up moving out of that lake house, I only worked out in that garage every morning. So about two and a half years, only garage workouts. And I continued that same workout split, which was four days of strength, one day of conditioning. I continued that after we moved to the lake. And then we actually got a Peloton bike in October 2021 when I was seven months pregnant with Rafe. Uh, what a time to start Peloton rides, right? Seven months pregnant. But I became obsessed with that. And so my conditioning days, my one conditioning day per week, became Peloton rides. And then sometimes I would do like a 20-minute ride or so after an upper body day. And as for my diet, after that first trimester sickness, I really was able to return to my normal eating. I was able to stomach protein, I was able to stomach vegetables and some fruit. And since I wasn't tracking, I don't have exact numbers, but I was for sure at the upper end of maintenance calories and into a surplus many days. Because when I look back on pictures and videos, I feel like I kind of got jacked during my pregnancy with rape. And I think it's due to the extra calories and just the regular strength training that I was doing. And obviously, I was pregnant. I wasn't trying to hit any PRs, but it just goes to show that like regular exercise and regular protein and a good amount of calories can really result in a decent physique. Even though I was pregnant, I feel like I was able to build up my upper body. Um, so throughout my entire pregnancy with Rafe, I really didn't struggle with any major pains. My body felt fine until closer to the end of pregnancy. And then towards the end, I experienced um, and there's no way, there's no other way to say this, other than exactly how I've heard everyone else describe it, but I had lightning crotch, which is exactly how it sounds. But that was really the only, you know, painful thing. But then um, in the final two weeks of the pregnancy, my ankles got swollen, especially on my right side, and I already have cankles, and so I'm not kidding you. It was straight, calf to foot. There was zero bone in sight, it was just skin. I had the most swollen ankles. Oh my goodness, my feet were so fat. But as I mentioned, I really felt great. I mean, there were times when I had a big baby bump towards the end, but I really didn't feel super pregnant, and I'm super thankful for that. Like, you know, some people they they have just miserable pregnancies, and my pregnancy with Vance is a lot different. We'll get to that in a second. But I'm just really thankful that I had no major aches and pains. I had no incredibly terrible sickness. So overall, it was a very, very easy pregnancy. And I think God blessed me with an easy pregnancy because of how hard postpartum recovery ended up being on my body. But before we get into delivery, just know that those last weeks of pregnancy, when it comes to exercise, it was just about walking into that garage gym and doing something. My workouts were anything but intense those last few weeks. I was just staying active and trying to retain some muscle to some degree. But like I said, thanks to the extra calories, I actually retained a lot of that muscle. And I think I built a little bit on my upper body during my pregnancy with Rafe. But unfortunately, I didn't fully understand the importance of strengthening and relaxing my pelvic floor muscles. I kind of just stayed active with strength training and cardio, and I really neglected my pelvic floor when I was pregnant with Rafe. I think it's just a matter of you don't know what you don't know. It was my first pregnancy. I knew strength training. I was, you know, certified personal trainer, but you don't learn about pelvic floor health during just your basic personal training certification. And I think that really ended up being another reason that postpartum recovery was so hard for me after having Rafe. So when it comes into like when I actually went into labor, I started having contractions at 39 weeks and five days. And like I mentioned, we lived in a secluded area and we were an hour away from the hospital that I was planning to deliver at. And the contractions were not intense, but they were regular. And they were waking me up in the middle of the night. And so the hospital suggested that we just go ahead and drive there because we were an hour away. You know, they didn't want my labor to progress and then me have a baby at home or on the road. So I'm not gonna go into details of the actual birth story with Rafe and Vance because this episode is already too long, and I'm just potentially gonna save that for another episode, like I said. But we were admitted to the hospital that night, so 39 weeks and five days pregnant. And then Rafe was born the next day around 1 p.m. So he was born at 39 weeks, six days pregnant. And since pregnancy is always centered around the mom, I thought it would be so special for Eric to be the one to see and announce the gender whenever both of our boys were born. And I've always pictured myself as a boy mom. And so when Eric announced it's a boy for both of our deliveries, it was just something I will never forget. Um, but when it does come to the delivery with Rafe, I actually had a fourth degree tear. And if you are unsure of what that is, one, you should probably just actually know. You probably don't want to Google it, but if you're curious, you should Google it. Um, but to put it lightly, it's when your skin tears from your you know what to your you know what. So my postpartum recovery was hard. But here I am, four and a half years later, plus another pregnancy. And I am here to encourage you that you will absolutely survive and you will come out stronger on the other side if you just give it time and you stay consistent. And I will say this I still was not well educated on the importance of pelvic floor and you know, core reconnection after having Rafe. But I did find a solid YouTube video from a doctor that I was doing on a regular basis, just the same YouTube video over and over and over. And I definitely think that helped me a little bit. But I do think some of the complications of my delivery with rafe and then my lack of knowledge of pelvic floor health and recovery thereafter is what led me to a pretty hard pregnancy with Vance. But all in all, my fourth degree tear healed perfectly fine. Now, it was one of the most painful several weeks of my life, still to this day, but I came back stronger. You know, I was able to return to exercise at six or seven weeks postpartum, like you know, an easy delivery would have been as well. So all was not lost because I had a fourth degree tear. I came back stronger. It just took me a little while to get back there in comparison to how quickly I felt better after having Vance. So that wraps up Rafe, and now I'm gonna transition into Vance. I mentioned that I got pregnant with Rafe naturally. With Vance, it did require some intervention from our fertility clinic. So we started going back to the fertility clinic in September 2023. We did one cycle of fertility medication, but didn't get pregnant. And then we attempted another cycle the next month, but I ended up developing some cysts. I had like six cysts in my all my ovaries. So we had to skip that cycle. And then after that, my doctor actually ordered a die test, DYE dye test, to just make sure that my fallopian tubes were properly working. And through that die test, they discovered that my entire left fallopian tube was blocked. So I just had a minor outpatient, what they call endoscopy, to I think that's how you say it, to remove the blockage. And so I've actually had endometrios endometriosis removed twice in my life. I had it first removed back in December 2019. This time it had grown back, and it was what was ultimately causing that tube to be completely blocked. So the surgery was a success. We had that surgery in January 2021, and then we had to take the next month off from any fertility treatments just to allow my body to recover. But then we did another round of medication and shots in March 2024 and found out we were pregnant with Vance in April 2024. And it's funny because my pregnancy with Rafe was this big surprise announcement to Eric. And then my pregnancy with Vance, it was me facetiming with Eric after I peed on the pregnancy test in the Walmart bathroom. So classy. I know. But just like with Rafe, I also got sick weeks six through 13 with Vance 2. I mean, I swear it was like clockwork with both of those pregnancies. Except this time I was nauseous almost the entire day. It was so brutal. It was way worse than it was with Rafe. And when I compare my pregnancy with Rafe to my pregnancy with Vance, it was almost like I wasn't even pregnant with Rafe. I mean, it was a complete breeze compared to the second time around with Vance. And outside of the same things I mentioned as my go-to items when it comes to the cravings, but also the things that helped me get a little bit more protein first trimester with Rafe. Additional things that helped me my second time around was candy. And I wish this was a joke. I'm talking nerd gummy clusters. I had these things called preggy drops, P-R-E-G-G-I-E. This is candy specifically for pregnancy nausea. I got them on Amazon. I swear they helped so much. And then ginger chews. So ginger is specifically to combat nausea. I swear, those truly alleviated some of my nausea symptoms. And I know the nerve gummy clusters were just a craving. But you know what? It brought happiness into first trimester when I was feeling sick as a dog. And you may be wondering how I was able to still stick to my early morning workouts during this nausea. And I truly don't know. I do not know. It's honestly hard for me to think back, but I do think it was just simply such a habit and what I did at that point. But I also had very low expectations for myself. So I saw like my energy and my effort as this sliding scale. So I knew I was going to show up to the gym in my garage or the public gym, regardless of how I felt that day. But my energy and effort were always a sliding scale, and every single day could look different. So when it comes to what I actually did for exercise, I mentioned that I found out I was pregnant with Vance in April 2024. It was April 15th, to be exact. And ironically, at the very beginning of that month in April, I had decided to switch from my five-day program in the app that was called Split to the three-day strength program called Foundations. So back then in early 2024, we had just recently launched the Foundations program, which is our three-day full body strength program. And I had also attended a health and fitness coaching conference in Vegas of that year. And so much of the focus at that conference was on cardio. Now I had been a cardio bunny for years, but once I got into strength training, I totally neglected cardio. But this conference that I went to, it really reinvigorated my desire to include cardio more. So I cut back on my strength training a little bit by going to the foundations program. And then I was fitting more cardio in by cutting back on strength training. So the first Monday in April, I announced that I was going to start the foundations program in the app. And then literally two weeks later, I found out I was pregnant with Vance. So the transition to that program was actually a blessing in disguise just because of how hard my pregnancy with Vance was on my body. And I think the approach of full body strength training was exactly what my body needed during that pregnancy versus me hitting one specific muscle group or, you know, just a few muscles really hard in one day of, you know, the same workout. So this is what it looked like. I would strength train Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then I would do cardio on Tuesdays and Thursdays. My one cardio day was a Peloton ride, and my other cardio day was the Stairmaster. So I started that program the first Monday in April, and then I found out I was pregnant with Vance on April 15th, and I continued that same foundations program all the way through my delivery with Vance that December. And I have since, having Vance, launched my pre and postnatal exercise and recovery programs. But during my pregnancy with him, I was actually completing those programs. So they were not ready yet. And if you were following me on Instagram back then, you know I had very intense pelvic pain and then some quote unquote unspoken issues during this pregnancy. I've never mentioned the specifics of this anywhere publicly until this podcast episode. So here we go. Before I was even 16 weeks pregnant with Vance, I started feeling this heaviness and pressure down there, for lack of a better description. And I mentioned it to my doctor, but they just said, oh, you know, that's the that's oftentimes the case with second pregnancies. Like, don't be concerned about it. But I specifically remember being at my niece's third birthday party at the very beginning of August. It was a Saturday and I was on my feet for almost the entire day. It was hot outside, and I could feel my lower body starting to swell. I'm talking my entire lower body, and it started getting worse and worse. And I could just, I was literally standing there feeling the swelling increase. So I went to the bathroom and I realized instantly, oh, okay, I'm not imagining this. I am so incredibly swollen. Like it was so swollen. And when I say it, I hope you know what I mean. It was so swollen, it did not look normal. And because it was the weekend, I called my doctor and I had to leave a message. And so then they ended up bringing me into the office for an appointment that very first of the next week. And he diagnosed me, and I hope I'm saying this correctly, he diagnosed me with vulvar varicosities. And since this entire podcast listening audience is women, I say entire is mostly women, I'm gonna go into the details of what vulvar varicosities are. And if you're a man listening, please ask Siri to fast forward 30 seconds or actually 60 seconds. Thank you for your understanding. Okay, vulvar varicosities are basically varicose veins in your vaginal region. And I know some of you cannot believe I'm talking about this publicly. I cannot either. But anyway, they are caused by hormone changes during pregnancy and increased pressure on the veins in your pelvic region. And let me just tell you, y'all, it was so, so painful. So not only that mention, meaning like not only the swelling, but also in addition to the swelling and all of that, I was also having sharp pain in my pelvis, even just standing up or walking. And it all made my legs feel like cinder blocks 24-7. Every step I experienced pain, and I just felt like I was dragging my legs behind me when I was walking. So at 16 weeks pregnant, my doctor said, okay, no more Peloton rides because obviously the saddle on a bike puts a ton of pressure down there. So instead of Peloton rides, I just switched to two Stairmaster workouts each week, which did alleviate some of the pain. But at the same time, the further I got into pregnancy, the worse the pain got. And some of you are wondering, okay, is there a cure for this? Is there something that you can do to get rid of these? Pretty much once they develop, and my doctor told this, and Google confirmed this, and my experience confirmed this as well. Like, once you develop them, you probably will not get rid of them until after your baby is just delivered. And I was thinking, you've got to be joking. I am only one-third of my way through this pregnancy, and you're telling me I'm gonna experience this the rest of my pregnancy. And I can tell you right now, that is the case. They did not go away, they only got worse. And finally, I was able to kind of like plateau the pain and the swelling at one point in my pregnancy, so it didn't get worse and worse and worse and worse all the way to 40 weeks pregnant. But boy, did it ramp up and I mean it was it was very painful. But to you know, answer some questions that you're probably wondering, is there a cure? Can you get rid of it? Most oftentimes you cannot. You just have to mitigate the pain as much as you can until the baby is delivered. So, because of all of the pain that I was having, mainly with um, you know, my pelvic area, like like I said, the vulvar varicosities, there wasn't really anything I could do about that. But I was like, okay, I'm gonna mitigate the pelvic pain because I know that's something that I can assist with. And so I started going to pelvic floor physical therapy weekly, starting at 16 weeks pregnant. The physical therapist did an internal exam to make sure that I was able to successfully contract and relax the pelvic floor, which I was, which was great news. And she also said that my pelvic floor muscles were hypertonic, which means they were just naturally too tight. And that was causing a lot of the sharp pain that I was having as well. So most of our PT appointments were centered around me learning how to properly relax my pelvic floor. And I still, to this day, I have a theory that my lack of knowledge during my pregnancy with Rafe and just my lack of diligence in focusing time, effort, and energy on the recovery of my pelvic floor after having Rafe, I think that ultimately led to a much more difficult pregnancy with Vance. And until I get pregnant with baby number three, I won't know for sure if this theory is correct because who knows, I might have these exact same issues with baby number three. But I have spent so much time and energy this second time around prioritizing my pelvic floor and rehabbing my core. And even to this day, at almost 17 months postpartum, I still do pelvic floor relaxation and contraction exercises about four to five times per week prior to my lifting workouts. So I'm gonna jump back to my pregnancy with advance, but I did want to insert that there was when it comes to like my theory of why my pregnancy with Vance was so hard. So at 23 weeks pregnant, um, like I said, the pain, it just kind of persisted and at some points it got really bad. So at 23 weeks pregnant, I was told by my doctor that I needed to scale back significantly on my strength training because my pelvic pain just became so bad. And I know that physical therapy was helping, but it was almost like the damage was done and we were more so mitigating the pain for the rest of my pregnancy. So I scaled back my efforts and strength training to around 50 to 60 percent effort or so. So this meant I was choosing lighter weights and I was taking longer rest periods, and I was also experiencing pain just even going on my normal outdoor walks each day. So the further I got into pregnancy, I had To implement so many things to just simply feel okay during the day. And like I said, this pregnancy was so incredibly hard on my body. But it's funny how God just allows you to forget how hard things were at times. So what I've been doing as I've planned this podcast episode is I've been scrolling back through my old Instagram posts when I was pregnant with Vance just to jog my memory of what all I did, because I think God kind of almost creates a black hole for all those memories. Thank goodness. But I did find a post from November 25th, 2024, and it detailed 12 things that I implemented to fill my best, despite, like I said, those vulvar varicosities and all the pelvic floor dysfunction I was experiencing. And it's funny because I posted that on November 25th, and then I ended up having Vance 12 days after posting that. So he came early at 37 weeks. And I'll get to that in just a moment. But I'm gonna go through what those 12 things were that I did to alleviate my pain. And I'm also going to link to this post in the show notes because it goes into a little bit more detail on each of these things. Number one, foam rolling. Number two, morning pelvic floor exercises. These were the exercises prescribed by my physical therapist, and I was doing those about five days per week. Number three was post-workout stretching. Number four was pelvic floor contractions during my lifts. Meaning strength training lifts. This is something that I had to do for every single rep during my lifting sessions. Because I had so much pressure on my pelvic floor, I had to initiate a pelvic floor contraction before every single rep. And then when I got to the top of that rep, or you know, in between reps, I would then relax and then I would initiate another pelvic floor contraction before the next rep. So this prevented the you know bearing down that they talk about during pregnancy and during delivery. It prevented the bearing down impact, which, like I said, if you're familiar with pregnancy, it's something they want you to avoid to a large degree because of the pressure that it generates to your pelvic floor. So number four was contract pelvic floor contractions during lifts. Number five was exertion breathing. This is another thing I implemented during every single rep. So generally, you hold your breath during a heavy or difficult rep to create, you know, tension and provide a strong base, but I had to breathe through each rep. So once again, that was to prevent any additional bearing down pressure on the pelvic floor. So what I would do is I would do that pelvic floor contraction, and then I would do the rep. And as I was going through the rep, I was breathing out, and then I would come to the top of that rep, I would release my pelvic floor contraction, and then I would do it again, and I would breathe through the rep. So it definitely made my workouts take a little bit longer, but I was also scaling back, so it was fine. That was number five, exertion breathing. Number six, I changed up our daily walks that we were doing. So at the time it was just me, Rafe, and Sully. So I Sully is our dog, by the way. I cut down from five to six days of daily walks to three to four days per week. And I also shifted the walks to the afternoons because of how incredibly tired my legs were after my morning workout. I felt like my legs were cinder blocks, like I said. So I would shift the workouts or the walks to the afternoons so that my legs had a little bit of time to recover before that. Number seven is I ordered a Sorola hip belt. I don't know if I'm saying that right, but Ciola S-E-R-O-L-A hip belt. I will link to that in the show notes. The belt looks like a something a general contractor would wear. It's the most unsexy thing ever. But it's basically to help hold up your pregnant belly. So it did help in relieving a lot of pressure to my pelvic floor. So I would wear that on our walks and I would wear it a little bit in additional to that. But I also didn't want my, you know, pregnant belly. I didn't want to put any effort into holding my belly up, you know, on my own. I wanted my body to do most of the work, but on the walks, the belt definitely helped. It just sits low on your hips and helps hold your belly up. So that was number seven. Number eight is Epsom salt baths. These really helped me relax at night before going to bed. Number nine was consistent deep core work. So I did this even late into pregnancy because I was able to still maintain strength in my core without my midsection coning any. And this is all thanks to my consistent deep core work that I did prior to pregnancy. Number 10 is compression socks, another unsexy thing that absolutely made a world of a difference. My legs would get so swollen throughout the day, and very firm compression socks really did wonders. Number 11, I elevated my legs. So sitting at just 90 degrees with my legs kicked up on the couch, it just wasn't cutting it. I had to lay on my back and elevate my legs with pillows for at least a few minutes during Wraith's nap each day. So number 11 was elevating my legs. Number 12 was to mitigate my restless leg before I went to bed. So the deeper I got into my pregnancy, the more a restless leg would wake me up at night. But if I foam rolled my legs before bed, this helped me a ton. And it's hard to describe restless leg until you've just experienced it. But it felt like this constant twitch or pull or like a little lightning strike in my leg. It was the most annoying thing ever. But if I foam rolled my quads and my hamstrings, it really helped mitigate the restless leg before I went to bed. So those were all 12 things that helped me tremendously. I mentioned that Vance came early. He was actually due on Christmas Day in 2024, but he joined us on December 6th, 2024. It's quite a story. And like I mentioned earlier, I may potentially do a full episode on the birth stories alone at some point, but this is just going to be leading up to when he arrived. So I went in for a routine 37-week appointment. It was on a Wednesday morning, and I found out that Vance was breach. Now, if you're pregnant, your ultrasounds towards the end, like the ultrasound where you can actually, you know, like see the baby in your belly, they get they're like pretty spaced out, which just does not make sense to me. Like I would love to go in every single time those last few weeks and see the baby, but it's just not routine for them to do that. So I had no idea that he was breach. You know, my uh pelvic floor physical therapist was kind of feeling my belly, you know, my doctor was feeling they both were super confident that he was head down. And maybe he was, but then he flipped. But normally, if they flip breach, you almost like experience some nausea or like you can tell that they flipped breach. I had no signs of that. So he could have potentially been breach all along, and I just had no idea. And if you are new to pregnancy and you're like, what does breach mean? So you want the baby to be head down, like when you get towards you know the last few weeks of pregnancy and you're about to deliver, you want the baby to be head down. But when they're breach, it means that they are head up, so they're feet down. It's not ideal. You don't want to deliver them that way. And so not only was he breach, but my doctor also said that my fluid levels were very low and that they actually needed to admit me to the hospital, give me some fluids, and monitor me overnight and into the next morning. Well, ironically, the team that Eric coaches football for at the time was headed to play in the state championship the very next day on that Thursday. So I was admitted on that Wednesday after my routine 37-week appointment, and his team was playing in the state championship that very next day on Thursday. Okay, now obviously the health of baby was the most important thing. Obviously. I hope you hear me say that. But I did tell my doctor, you know, if it is safe for me to do so, I really want to do everything possible to try and make it to his game. And my doctor told me that if my fluid levels looked good the next morning, meaning the Thursday morning, that I could be discharged from the hospital and I could just go about life as normal. But he said that if they checked my fluid levels the next morning and they still were not in a good spot, that meant that baby two, which at the time we didn't know was Vance, needed to be born. And the chances of, and the reason that the baby would need to be born then is that the chances of a breech baby flipping is very, very, very low when there isn't enough fluid for them to do so. Also, just low fluids in general is obviously not safe for the baby. So I stayed in the hospital overnight, and sure enough, that next morning my fluid levels had dropped again. And so my doctor said that if I had one more round of fluids that morning, that he would be fully confident in me being discharged from the hospital, going to the football game that night, and then Eric and I would both be returning to the hospital that next morning on Friday for a last minute scheduled C-section. So that's what we ended up doing. I was able to leave the hospital around 1 p.m. that Thursday. I came home, I showered, I changed for the game, and then Rafe and I headed to the stadium to cheer on Eric's team. And it was, it was such a whirlwind. But it's also a time I will never forget because like just seeing Eric walk into the stadium with his team after putting so much time, effort, and energy to make it to that point in their season while also knowing in the back of my mind that in just a few hours we're going to become a family of four. And also throw in that this was my last night with Rafe being our only child. And also, you know, pregnancy hormones were raging. I mean, it was just emotions on emotions on emotions. But all in all, Eric's team, unfortunately, ended up losing that year in the state championship, which is a bummer. But we both knew that the next day, it was just like so full of anticipation, you know. So we got home from that game after midnight on Thursday night. We got in bed, and then just a few hours later, we were waking up to go in Friday morning to the hospital for the C-section. Now, obviously, a C-section wasn't what I had hoped or planned for. I actually wanted an induction and a vaginal birth, but ultimately all you care about is the health of the baby, and anyone who's pregnant will tell you that's the absolute truth. Vance ended up joining us at 120 that afternoon, and once again, Eric was able to say, it's a boy to the entire room. And thinking about that makes me want to cry. But one thing that I haven't mentioned yet is that I was 100% convinced, convinced, convinced, convinced that Vance was a girl. I'm telling you, since my pregnancy with him was so much harder than my pregnancy with Rafe, I just knew there was no way that they were the same gender. But lo and behold, another boy. And like I said, um, I had a fourth degree tear with Rafe and then a last minute C-section with Vance. And I can say with absolute certainty that my C-section recovery was easier than my fourth degree tear. Maybe it was because of the severity of my tear with Rafe, but I have full confidence that also my time spent focusing on pelvic floor health before and after my delivery with Vance played into how easily I recovered the second time around. Because by the time I had Vance, I had completed my pre and postnatal certification and I was building out those programs. So beginning week one, postpartum advance, I started just simple breathing exercises directly from my postpartum program. And then I layered in stretching and then core reconnection exercises and then band and body weight exercises, and then I slowly implemented strength training again. So from week zero through week 20, postpartum advance, I followed my own back to you. That's what the program is called, back to you postpartum program. And that was exactly, and I mean exactly what my body needed. It is an incredibly slow and repetitive program right out of the gate, which is what's needed for newly postpartum moms. And as I mentioned, still to this day, I do breathing exercises from that program on the contraction and relaxation side. And I also do thoracic spine mobility from that program as well. I do the same exact routine prior to lifting, and I do that about four to five days per week, still now, even 17 months postpartum. And I promise that even if you are in the trenches of pregnancy or the trenches postpartum, a stronger you is on the other side because I have been through the trenchiest, the trenchiest of trenches. And I'm here to tell you that you can be 100% unrecognizable in less than a year postpartum. I am almost 17 months postpartum from my second pregnancy. That was a C-section. And in the past year, I have competed in four Hyrux races, and I started running again for the first time in 14 years, and I PR'd a half marathon. So I promise you, your best days are ahead. That's all for today. I know this was a longer episode, and there are so many things that I wanted to include, but I didn't just for time purposes. But things I would love to talk about in the future are my actual birth stories about how things progressed, both with Rafe and Vance. I might include that in a future episode, but also what postpartum nutrition looked like because I breastfed both of my boys for several months postpartum, and breastfeeding hunger, there's nothing like it. But all in all, I want you to know that pregnancy in and of itself is such a blip in time. And I do not want you stressing out over it. Yes, when your body can handle nutrient-dense foods, you know, high protein foods, vegetables, and fruits, give your body that when you, you know, want it. But also do not stress if you want anything but healthier foods first trimester, because generally that first trimester sickness will wear off around week 13 and you can get back to your normal eating habits. That was the case for me. It's the case for a lot of other pregnant women that I coach. So just don't let that first trimester get you totally off your kilter. And also, anything that you are able to do during pregnancy to stay active, I cannot recommend it enough. It will make your postpartum recovery so much easier. Thanks for joining me for another episode of the Daily Penny. I'm going to link to the pre and postnatal programs in the show notes, as well as that Instagram post for the 12 things that I did to mitigate pain towards the end of my pregnancy with Vance. But until next time, keep adding another penny in the jar.