Part One: Exercising While Pregnant

Before I get into the past five months of exercise, while there's been a baby in my belly, I think I better be honest about my exercise history until now:

My exercise history is a spotty one.  I've always been active but I've never been a workout-junkie. Growing up I took dance classes, played basketball and liked playing outside with the neighborhood kids.  As I got older and I had to be more choosy about how to spend extra time, I tended to prioritize exercise lower and lower on the list.  My last semester in college  drove home the idea that I wasn't going to be young (with a good metabolism) forever so I decided I better start some exercise habits if I wanted to be healthy and fit into adulthood.  I signed up for a conditioning class because I figured, if my GPA depends on it, I'll stick with the exercise plan.  And I did.  But.  Did it change my exercise philosophy forever?  Unfortunately, no.  I ended up with the opportunity to move to NYC to pursue my acting dream and did so just five days after graduation.  There was a gym in my apartment building and I would make weekly visits to it.  Notice I say "weekly", not "daily."  Sometimes it was monthly.  I figured I walked a lot living in NY, so it all evened out.  After a couple years of this lackadaisical approach to exercise, I met my husband.  And he was (and is) the workout-junkie I never was.  He faithfully went to the gym every other day, never making excuses to skip it.  His discipline was astounding to me and it ended up being inspiring as well.  I got a membership at his gym.  I started going to classes and running on the elliptical.  Was I as disciplined as him?  Not even close.  But I started to get into a semi-routine and I started to like it.  It always helped if I had a goal though.  When we got engaged, I had a wedding to work toward, with a honeymoon in Jamaica where I planned on being in a bikini most of the day.  Motivation! When we moved to LA, the ever present possibility of a role coming along that I could lose if I wasn't fit enough helped motivate me.  But it only motivated me to an extent. I was still casual with my routines.  As long as I did some sort of activity a couple times a week, I figured I was fine.  I was never going to be cast as the "super-hot chick" anyway.  I'm more of the girl-next-door type and figured it wouldn't kill my career if I didn't have abs of steel.

I give you all this back story so that you know where I'm coming from when I say that getting into a steady exercise routine is not something that has come totally naturally for me.  But I'm in one now!  Here's how I got there:

A race back in April this year.
I had run my fastest time yet and
was clearly excited.  Nerd alert.

My husband and I had been thinking about starting a family for well over a year now.  When we started thinking about it, I decided I should start being more serious about my exercise routine.  Every woman is different, but for me, I knew that I wanted to be fit going into a pregnancy for several reasons:

1. If I was going to be carrying extra weight and growing a human inside of me, I'd better be able to handle it!  
2. The idea of going through labor without being somewhat in shape terrified me.
3. For completely vain reasons, how was I going to get back into shape post-baby in a healthy and timely fashion if I hadn't been in shape to begin with??

At the time when serious baby talk started, my husband had recently gotten back into running and started working toward running in a local 5K.  If I had to go cheer him on at an ungodly hour of the morning, I figured I better be running in it too.  I never loved running but it was a good way to be active, there was a race to work toward and there was the bigger goal of being fit by the time we started trying to conceive.  Slowly but surely I started.  It wasn't always easy.  I won't lie, there was sometimes walking thrown in with the running.  But by the time the race day appeared, I ran faster than I thought I could and would.  And I didn't stop to walk!  Sure, I still got beat by generations older and younger than me but I finished the race.  High off of that experience, one race turned into another, which turned into another and before I knew it, I was running regularly, three miles a day, four to five times a week, and we were doing races together every other month or so.  Because of this shift in my exercising life, I also found that I started to be more active in general.  I would go on weekly hikes with my friend Corinne and I loved snagging up Groupons and Living Social deals for local yoga and barre studios so I could try new classes around town.  It would be about a year and half before we decided it was finally the right time for us to start a family and, by then, I considered myself a runner.

Thank goodness!  I knew that being fit during my pregnancy was a top priority.  I also knew that starting a new workout routine after conceiving wasn't going to work out.  I'd make excuses, I'd be too tired, I'd fall back on old habits and I wouldn't be as fit as I wanted to be.  Being fit and having good workout habits had to be established before we started trying for a baby.  I was ready.

Two months after that picture above was taken...I took a pregnancy test and two lines appeared!  There was a baby on the way!

TO BE CONTINUED...