This week I’m publishing a series of posts on women’s experience of exercise during and after pregnancy. There have been a series of high profile sportswomen continuing to train and compete in recent months. But what about regular active women? This week I’ll interview a runner, swimmer, triathlete and yoga teacher.

Manda Read, swimmer, 11 months postpartum.

Before pregnancy I would swim twice during the week for around 1 hour and then do a longer swim on the weekend. I would also run twice a week including a track session and reformer pilates once or twice a week.

During pregnancy I carried on swimming as normal, well as normal as you can with a massive bump! It was only post 5k swimathon at 30 weeks that I stopped doing a longer swim on weekends and instead would just swim for an hour at a time. I actually found out I was pregnant straight after a track session and after that never did another one.

I stopped running fully around 20 weeks as I just wasn’t enjoying it anymore. Post 12 weeks I added pre-natal Yoga, physio pilates and tempo pilates to compliment the swimming. I never felt at any point that I was missing out, if anything I felt fitter and stronger whilst pregnant than I did beforehand. I was training for the biggest event of my life so wanted to make sure I was properly prepared.

Since Miles was born I haven’t tried running. I had a natural birth but I had pelvic pain until 8 months post-partum and now the pain has resolved I have a fear of pelvic floor weakness leading to some running induced leakage!

I returned to swimming 3 times a week and pilates once a week at six weeks postpartum. I was lucky that my local prenatal pilates teacher had her baby a couple of months before I had Miles, so a summer of buggylates with her and other mums in the park was the perfect maternity workout.

I did Coniston End-to-End swim (5 miles) 12 weeks postpartum so I had a goal to build towards once I was back in the water but I made a promise to myself that if I didn’t feel ready or wasn’t going to enjoy it then I wouldn’t do it. In order to do this all I go to bed at the same time as Miles and then I do most of my training pre 8am so that I don’t miss out on time with Miles.

I definitely was expecting to be back running by now. Not long after Miles was born I signed up for the March edition of the swimmer (a swim/run through London) but it soon became apparent that wasn’t going to be realistic. I have moments where I miss it terribly, especially now I am back at work and can’t RUNch but then I remember that I probably wouldn’t have the energy to do it alongside the swimming, pilates, job and being a mum, so so be it.

It has become easier now I don’t need to be permanently on call for breastfeeding. The time management needed to ensure I was available for feeding was military-esq. I nearly missed the start of Coniston as I was feeding Miles in the car just behind the start line. I wanted him as fed up as possible so he wouldn’t need a feed whilst I was swimming and I needed smaller boobs to fit in my wetsuit! I will have to apologise to him in later life for all the cold milk he got when I was shivering still post lido swim whilst feeding him. I wanted to breastfeed so I just had to make it work for me and him.

I didn’t tell my work I was pregnant until five months and there were comments that no one knew because I “carried on as usual”. The people that know me best were great and know that swimming is not just physical but mental for me and the worst thing I could have possibly done was stop. One of my colleagues is Chinese and in Chinese culture it is the norm for you to rest inside your house for 30 days post birth so the fact that I swam 8+km after 12 weeks was slightly perplexing to him.

All the medical professionals I dealt with whilst pregnant never raised any issues with my activity levels and they were always enthusiastic about it so I never felt like I was doing anything wrong, I was doing the best by me and the baby. Katie, the other half of Team Mermaids, had her son 18 months before I had Miles, so I had a great role model in staying active during pregnancy and then making it work for you as a new family.

I think as cliché as it sounds everyone is different and everyone needs to listen to their body. Women should be empowered and given sensible information to do what is right for them, if that is competing in a grand slam final then great, if it is resting and watching a little more Netflix* then also great.

*because you won’t get time to do this once the baby arrives.

You can read more about Manda’s training on the Team Mermaids blog.

Each woman and pregnancy is different. Speak to your own healthcare professionals about what might be right for you and if at any point something doesn’t feel right, stop and seek advice.