Baby and Mom Exercise - Nice!
Baby and Mom exercise can be a great way to do something for yourself while at the same time have fun with your baby. You get more energy and start your journey towards getting your post pregnancy body under control. Your baby gets activated, stimulated and have fun.
If you want to exercise at home or attend a class it is by far easiest to begin before your baby starts moving around. After that you might mot even be allowed to join some mom and baby exercise classes - for understandable reasons. If you have 10 babies crawling all over the floor, it is not easy to do any workout at all.
So don't wait for too long. But also don't start too early. First rest and get used to actually having a baby in your arms. Then you can start, slowly.
Below you'll find some exercise tips on things you can do with your baby.
Take a walk
This is the easiest way to get some exercise. You can start more or less from the day you gave birth, although you'll have to take it very slowly in the beginning. Either carry your infant in a sling or baby carrier or use his stroller.
In some cities you can find walking groups. A fun way to meet other moms!
If you walk in a park, or at least under some trees, your baby will have some fun too, looking at the swaying leaves. With older babies, go somewhere where there are a lot of people to look at and a lot of variation.
When your baby is 6 mouths old or so, you can put him in a jogging stroller and hit the trail. Many babies find it extremely exiting to go fast.
Just make sure you fix the front wheel of the stroller if you will be jogging somewhere where the road in rough. Otherwise the stroller might turn over.
When your baby is some eight mouths old or so, and sits steadily, you can put him in a bicycle seat and take him for a ride. Don't forget to put on a helmet of the right size (one for you and one for your baby)!
And practice together with someone else on putting your baby in the bicycle seat and get going the first few times. It can be pretty scary to place a wriggling baby in the seat and try to get up on your bike until you know how to do it.
Some bicycle seats can be put in a resting position. This is very convenient for babies that tend to sleep relatively often.
This is my favorite! I love yoga and doing yoga together with a baby can be a lot of fun. In most forms of yoga, you tend to go down on the floor from standing up quite a bit. If you do this, bending over your baby, he is likely to think that it is great fun.
Join a mom and baby yoga class or exercise at home to baby exercise video. Or do both!
However finding a good mom and baby yoga video is not that easy. (Actually, finding a good exercise video is hard in any case, I think.) One DVD that you might want to consider is Yoga Mommies: Mommy & Baby Yoga. The workout is 30 minutes long and contains both exercises that you do with your baby and some that you do on your own.
Another option is to buy a book to help get going. An interesting book that consistently gets great reviews from its readers is Itsy Bitsy Yoga by Helen Garabedian. The book contains exercises from babies from newborn to the age of 2.
Another mom and baby exercise possibility is pilates. Pilates is gentle but still very effective to improve the strength of for example your back and abdominal area.
If you haven't tried pilates, consider buying a video or attending a class.
A video that gets very ratings from its users is Jennifer Gianni's Fusion Pilates - Exercise with Baby (2005). You can buy it at for example Amazon.
While maybe not so exiting, plain vanilla workout, like sit ups are a great way to get your body back. You can use your baby to get some extra resistance, for example put your baby on your stomach while doing sit ups. Lift your baby to exercise your biceps and so on.
In many cities you'll find workout classes where you can bring your baby, at least until he learns how to crawl.
If you have a lot of space at home, you can of course consider buying a stair-machine, treadmill, training cycle or some other type of training equipment.
I wouldn't exactly call this mom and baby exercise - more mom exercise, but if your baby enjoys watching you, for example from his baby bouncer, then why not?
