Capoeira in the first trimester

This was my experience of doing capoeira during pregnancy. I was 31 years old, having my first baby, and had been training regularly for more than 3 years.


To Play Or Not To Play?

When I decided to have a baby, I'd spent most of the preceding year training hard in the gym to improve my strength for capoeira. I had been on a diet, lost a few kilos and was quite pleased with the progress I'd made in my shoulder stability/bananeira, for example. As a result I had no intention of sitting still for my entire pregnancy!

However, I was nervous at first about safety and miscarriage. The anecdotal advice spanned the whole spectrum from:
"Before she has children, a woman should never carry anything or she'll damage her womb"
to "A pregnant woman can run marathons if she wants to!"
When I looked online, I found videos like this one of advanced capoeiristas doing intense training practically until they gave birth. But I still wasn't convinced because I'm not that experienced.

Medical professionals (midwives and GP) repeatedly told me to continue doing everything that I did before pregnancy, for as long as possible. They specifically encouraged me to continue doing capoeira, but to "listen to my body" and to take care as I became less streamlined. I found it very reassuring to have this endorsement.

I decided to continue going to classes, but avoid playing in the roda. The idea was that doing sequences in pairs was more predictable and therefore safer for avoiding abdominal injury or falls. Many months later I read that, in fact, the first trimester is not very risky for abdominal blows because the uterus is low down and protected by the pelvis (although the risk increases later on).

I didn't tell my mestre that I was pregnant until the traditional 12 week mark. I do regret not telling him sooner, which is good advice for anyone doing any kind of instructed exercise!


Physical Challenges

Aside from the issue of whether to continue training on principle, there were physical difficulties to overcome! Although I didn't look much different, at times I felt utterly awful. And by all accounts, my first trimester was a lot easier than other people's...

* Feeling fluey
Around the time of conception, people say you feel run down as if coming down with flu. I didn't hear that until afterwards, but it was indeed the case for me too. I dragged myself to classes but the post-training DOMS and stiffness were far worse than usual.

* PMT 
Around the 4 week mark I started getting terrible cramps, bloating, and that leaden feeling normally associated with PMT. It lasted more than a week and made it impossible to train (or sleep).

* Nausea
For me the morning sickness was only nausea, not actual vomiting. Thank god. It started subtly as a loss of appetite at 5 weeks, progressing to awful nausea by 10 weeks, and then gradually getting better by the 13 week mark. During this time I was definitely not eating enough to train properly, had a bad spell of IBS and lost weight.

* Palpitations, breathlessness and fainting
The palpitations started at 6 weeks, and the utter exhaustion and faints started about 8 weeks. Capoeira had to be very gentle with plenty of breaks at this time, although I never fainted during a class - only when walking in the street!

* Swollen sore ankles
This was brought on directly by training. After classes my ankles would swell and felt as though I had a sprain. After a few days the swelling would reduce (just in time for another session!). With retrospect I should have been strapping my ankles and using ice packs... but I didn't. In the past I'd got into the habit of dosing up on NSAIDs when there was inflammation or swelling after particularly tough sessions or capoeira events. Ibuprofen and other anti-inflammatories are controversial to use during pregnancy (in some cases no problems are found, but elsewhere it has been linked to miscarriage) so that had to stop.

* Tender chest
In the first trimester I went up by about three sizes. It was like being a teenager again: jumping around, running and getting knocked in the chest were so painful. A super-supportive sports bra helped a bit!


So what was possible to do?

Apart from feeling perpetually hungover, during the first trimester I still managed to do capoeira three days a week and weights in the gym 5 days a week, just with more rest time than usual. The common abdominal and back difficulties had not yet appeared so my capability was only really limited by stamina and breathlessness. As long as I took it slow, doing exercise actually made me feel a lot better.

I noticed at this time that the machines in the gym have health warning on them in various languages, and the French word for breathlessness is "d'essoufflement". Isn't that lovely?