Just a little heads up to everyone - I'm not pregnant, not expecting to be anytime soon, and basically know nothing about pregnancy myself, but thought this would be a good discussion topic (and one I am curious to know more about).

I have a dance friend in her late 20s who is a clogger and fell pregnant earlier this year (her husband is incidentally, also a clogger lol). As you can imagine, my friend kept on dancing through the pregnancy and recently went to this major clogging convention in another state.

But then when she was over in this other state, she ended up going into labour and baby came three months premature. Lived for 14 hours



Whilst I do know that many other dancers kept on dancing almost till birth and were fine (this group includes one of my dance teachers who gave birth at 45 ), I feel sad for my dance friend because not only are she and her husband going to be paranoid about the next pregancy (I guess this is a given) but she is probably going to stop dancing or severely cut back on it during her next pregnancy (we all assume they will try again - they definately want children) Considering that she loves what she does and has been doing it since forever, wouldn't stopping, even if only for 9 months, have more of a detrimental rather than beneficial effect on the pregnancy? (considering mobility, emotional impact etc etc)

So some questions for you all:

1) Did you dance/are you dancing through your pregnancy? Why/why not, and do you think this helped?

2) If the above isn't relevant, WOULD you dance through your pregnancy? Why or why not?

3) For those who have been in a situation like this, what advice/opinions do you have to share?

I danced with both of my pregnacies until 8 months along. Of course, towards the end there is not a whole lot of "dancing"...more of just being there and doing small things. The thing I found to be the best was stretching. I was uncomfortable, like most women, so being there and doing some stretches helped my body physically feel better. Plus, the thought of sitting home and just waiting for the baby to arrive sounded like torture!

You've got to listen to your body and definitely keep hydrated! Of course, I did ask my doctor about dancing and he said to continue unless I started having pains, etc.

Sorry about your friend. It may have happened anyway and may not of had anything to do with her dancing.

1) Did you dance/are you dancing through your pregnancy? Why/why not, and do you think this helped?

I danced, right up to the minute that my doctors went "For the love of Mike, stop already!" Which, that time equals the last night of my 34th week.

Why did I do it? I felt better when I danced - I got the kinks out, baby settled down (for a minute...he's an active little guy!), and I got to think about something other then "Holy crap, I'm gonna have a baby!" Plus, I'm sure there's all sorts of other physical benefits that I'm not aware of. But, that's just what I know of.

I absolutely think it helped me, and I'd do it again in a second.

2) If the above isn't relevant, WOULD you dance through your pregnancy? Why or why not?

n/a

3) For those who have been in a situation like this, what advice/opinions do you have to share?

n/a

Yes, I am dancing through my current pregnancy. My last actual performance was 7 July, which would've been week 24. It was quite difficult as I was in a very demanding 10 minute modern dance piece and was onstage the whole time. Currently, I am teaching classes and I plan to continue until mid-October when I'm 38 weeks. I wanted to teach another week, but my husband said absolutely not, since my studio is an hour plus away from our hospital (although it is right next to another hospital).

I have a variety of reasons for continuing dancing, first and foremost that it's my only source of income. My husband is a grad student, so he has a yearly stipend, but we really need the extra income from my teaching. Financials aside, dancing makes me feel better, especially when the baby decides to turn a funny way. And I agree with Theresa - it gives me something else to think about besides being pregnant, except for when I'm stretching and I realize I can't reach my toes with my feet together because there's a belly in the way

adridancer

*the only sin is mediocrity*~MG

My Irish dance teacher danced through her last pregnancy... not sure if she did through the first one. She danced along side us up until her 7th month, I think. Then she refused to do leaps, but would do everything else. She danced until about 2 weeks before she gave birth. Her sister also taught me and did the same when she was pregnant.

Glad you clarified you're not preggers- I saw the title of the post and thought another mod was pregnant!

I danced until I was 4 months pregnant and it was definitely time to stop. Irish is such high-impact exercise and my belly was getting so big that I knew I was pushing it.

While it is safe (and recommended) to exercise during pregnancy, you really should stop high-impact kinds of dance by the fifth month and switch to lower impact workouts like walking and aerobics. Pregnancy places A LOT of demands on your body, and I really don't think it's wise to push it no matter how much you love to dance. Just because you CAN doesn't mean that you should, you know? I do not think it is detrimental to the mother to have to stop dancing...there are other things you can do for personal and physical fulfillment, and YOU have a choice about how you cope...your baby does not. And even though it is hard (I miss dance and can't wait to get back), it is one of the first lessons of being a parent that self-sacrifice is part of the deal. If you're not prepared to deal with that, then you should consider it before you have a baby.

The other thing to consider is this...when you're pregnant, the ligaments in your body stretch, making you prone to injury. Also, your abdominal muscles, ligaments, and organs stretch (and even kind of get repositioned), and doing a high-impact activity puts a lot of undue stress on parts of your body that aren't used to receiving it.

If you REALLY listen to your body, you will know when enough is enough. A great rule of thumb that any doctor will tell you is this: if you can't hold a conversation while doing the exercise, then it is too much. And you are also supposed to keep your heart rate under 140.

PLEASE don't push this, no matter how good you feel. It is much more important to give your child a good, healthy start than it is to keep going hard at something just because it's your thing. You can adapt to gentler exercise in the meantime...risking your baby's life and wellbeing is NOT worth the thrill you get from dancing.

^I do feel for your friend, glitterfairy. When you lose a child you always blame yourself, even though it's just nature's way sometimes.
It's a very good question you asked. I think the answer depends what sort of dancing you do. There is no way you could compete in disco comps if you were more than 3 months pregnant as it would be way too risky. All those kicks, splits, jumps and back catches!
I've had 5 kids and the most exercise I did was getting out of the chair to turn the television over!! (I'm very lazy!)
Good luck to all you energetic people out there who continue to dance whilst pregnant!

Queen_Jojo

Yes I would dance though a pregancy as long as I was comfortable. When I had my children I was a competitive middle distance runner and had no real problems. Though you should be guided by your doctor and taking up new strenous activity is not advised.

Four women in my balletstudio got pregnant and they all kept on dancing. At the end they didn´t stretched so much anymore and they didn´t do any jumps, but they did everything else.
All four babies are born now and in all four cases everything went right.

When a child is born too early it´s often hard to say why it happened. Maybe it happened because of the dancing, but chance is also high it´s not and it would´ve happened anyways.
I wish your friend good luck in case of a new pregnancy, going through things like this is always very horrible.

Kathy

HI glitterfairy,

I whish to send a PM to the admin of this site but i can find his pseudo and i can not send PM ...

I danced throughout my pregnancy until I busted my ankle at 7 months (not from dancing, but from walking on uneven ground!), but I limited what I did. No jumps after 4 months, no turns (my balance was really off) and took a break if I got a bit tired or sore. I had to wear a belly bra to support the bump when dancing around the 6 month mark.

Helen

So far during this pregnancy, I competed two solos (one jazz, one modern) untill 4 months, and did some shows that last untill I was around 3 months. Since then (Im at 31 weeks) Ive just been teaching, which allows me to sort of go at my own pace. I have an assistant to do all the jumping and high-impact stuff for me, which is a huge help, but I am still getting exercise, and it feels great. I plan on teaching up untill delivery, but near the end this could consist of relying on my assistant much more and spending most of the class seated