Can You Ride a Bike While Pregnant?
Pregnancy is an amazing, special time filled with constant changes to your body. If you were relatively active before you got pregnant, you might wonder how much of your routine you can continue with now that you have a baby growing inside you. For instance, can you ride a bike while pregnant?
Biking while pregnant is safe since it’s a low-impact activity that provides some much-needed aerobic exercise. Even if you weren’t an avid cycler before, you can still ride a bike during pregnancy. As your stomach grows, cycling may become harder, but some women ride a bike their whole pregnancies!
Of course, since every pregnancy is different, I always recommend you consult with your doctor before incorporating new forms of exercise into your routine when pregnant.
Keep reading for more information that will help you determine where cycling fits into your pregnant lifestyle.
Is It Safe for a Pregnant Woman to Ride a Bicycle?
Learning that you’re pregnant is one of the most exciting moments in a woman’s life. If this is your first pregnancy though, that excitement will soon evaporate into worry as you go about your day-to-day life.
Early into your pregnancy, the risk of miscarriage can be high. When that risk drops, you still have to worry about premature labor. These concerns might cause you to make alterations to your lifestyle. You’ll naturally be curious about where–if anywhere–cycling fits in.
If your doctor approves it, then you can ride a bicycle when pregnant. That goes for when you’re early on in your pregnancy and not yet showing to when that baby bump is popping to even when you get closer to your due date.
That’s right, you can cycle throughout your entire pregnancy!
While bike riding while pregnant is not without its risks (which I’ll talk more about later), it’s extremely beneficial.
I’ll discuss more benefits shortly, but one that I want to mention now is weight control.
Depending on how much you weighed before you got pregnant, you’re supposed to only gain so much weight during your pregnancy.
At the very least, the weight gain should be 25 pounds, and at most, 35 pounds.
You might feel nauseous in your first few months of pregnancy, which makes it easy to keep your weight down. Yet what happens when the morning sickness abates and your appetite increases?
Pregnant women need more calories than non-pregnant women (up to 2,400 calories by the third trimester) and should gain about a pound a week, but between the cravings and the increased hunger, it’s easy to gain more weight.
Exercising allows you to eat without necessarily gaining weight. You can burn off extra calories so you stay within that 2,400-calorie limit.
You won’t feel hungry (which you never should when pregnant!), but you won’t gain more than one pound a week.
Gaining too much weight in pregnancy, after all, can lead to a variety of issues, including an obese child, having to rely on C-section delivery, and other complications during your delivery.
How Far Can You Cycle When Pregnant?
You spoke to your doctor and got approval to ride a bike, but you two didn’t discuss an allowable distance.
How far you can ride when pregnant depends on a few factors, so let’s talk about them.
Your Activity Levels Pre-Pregnancy
As I touched on before, women who led very active lifestyles pre-pregnancy will find it a lot easier to transition into continued exercise while carrying a baby.
That’s not to say that you don’t feel any pain or energy drain like any other pregnant woman does, because of course you do.
You’ve already built the foundation for regular exercise though, especially compared to a woman who was only moderately active or mostly sedentary before getting pregnant.
Like I said in the intro, you can still cycle when pregnant even if you didn’t exercise much before, but it might be more difficult for you.
Your Energy Levels
Pregnancy saps your energy. Considering you’re growing a tiny human inside you, this is very much understandable!
During the first trimester, at least through the first half, you might not feel any different. Then it all hits you like a ton of bricks.
Some women regain their energy in the second trimester while others are exhausted throughout their pregnancies.
No matter which camp you fall into, how much energy you have in your day-to-day life is absolutely going to impact how far you can ride a bike or how long you can engage in any other physical activities.
Your Stamina
Here’s where a prior background in exercise helps, as you’ll have more built-in stamina, so to speak.
That’s not to say that you can’t work on endurance and stamina, but this is harder to do when pregnant, especially as you get further along.
In some cases, even though you used to be an exercise machine before you got pregnant, your pregnancy has robbed you of your stamina.
In that case, short, casual bike rides are best.
Your Pain Levels
In early pregnancy, the most pain you’ll feel is in your abdomen as you may wrestle with constant nausea.
Later, as your belly begins to swell and your body changes, the pain will come for many women.
Your ligaments will loosen, which could lead to aches and pains around the back, stomach (this pain is different from nausea), hips, and legs.
You may experience sore breasts as well, which won’t make cycling very fun!
The Benefits of Riding a Bike While Pregnant
Riding a bike as a pregnant lady, provided your doctor says it’s okay, can be quite advantageous. Let’s take a look at some of the perks you can enjoy.
Burns Calories
As I talked about earlier, riding a bike is a great way to burn calories. The low-impact exercise won’t strain your joints or your already loosened ligaments.
You will want to track your exercise levels to ensure you’re not losing too much weight. After all, you’re pregnant, so you are supposed to be gaining weight.
Increases Your Mood
Between the pain, the exhaustion, and all the visits to your ob/gyn’s office, you don’t always get a lot of time outside as a pregnant woman.
This means you’re missing out on the mood-boosting benefits of vitamin D. You can drink in this vitamin in abundance when outside riding your bike, as the sunlight delivers it in spades.
Vitamin D can lessen stress, anxiety, and depression, all of which you might be wrangling with when pregnant.
Maintains Your Endurance and Muscle Tone
If you already built up certain stamina levels when pregnant, there’s no need to lose that over the ensuing nine months.
It will be a while after delivery before you can dive back into your regular exercise routine, but once that glorious day finally comes, you’ll find that having exercised throughout your pregnancy such as riding a bike will make it easier to get back to your old endurance levels.
You can similarly maintain your muscle tone by riding a bike when pregnant, although this benefits your lower half more so than your upper half.
Muscle tone loss is always a risk when you stop exercising for any prolonged period. If you spent long periods sculpting and toning your body, pregnancy doesn’t have to derail that for you.
It will take more time after delivering to get back to your pre-baby body, but you’ll already have a good base to work with.
Boosts Your Energy Levels
As I talked about earlier, exhaustion is a common consequence of being pregnant.
If you find that you can barely keep your eyes open through your favorite TV show anymore, the last thing you think might help would be exercising, but you’d be surprised!
Riding a bike or engaging in other forms of exercise, provided it’s not to the point of exhaustion, will give you a little spark of energy that might make it easier to get through the rest of your day. This could be the most energetic you’ve felt in months!
Helps You Digest
As your pregnancy progresses, progesterone levels rise. This can relax the muscles throughout your body, making digestion a slower process. The gallbladder empties more slowly as well.
Pregnant women also usually deal with constipation from higher-than-usual progesterone levels, so your digestion can be a mess.
Cycling can move food more quickly through your system and lessen the lost water in stool, both of which improve your digestion.
Aids in Sleep
Pregnant women tend to struggle with sleeping. You’ll have vivid dreams, and the aches and pains of your growing body make it tough to find a comfortable sleeping position and stay there.
On top of that, some pregnant women get stuffed up or otherwise can’t easily breathe when trying to sleep.
While riding a bike doesn’t erase any of those things, you will be tired and find it easier to shift off to dreamland at least!
The Risks of Riding a Bike While Pregnant
Riding a bike when pregnant can truly be exceptional for your physical and mental health, as I’ve established. However, the activity is not without its risks. Here they are for your perusal.
Falling Off Your Bike
By far, the greatest risk of all when cycling as a pregnant woman is falling off your bike.
Even if you’re usually quite surefooted when biking, the changes in your center of gravity and the looser ligaments throughout your body can make it harder for you to stay upright on the bike.
If you fall, all sorts of horrible consequences could arise.
Abdominal trauma is by far the worst. Whether the trauma could be severe enough to hurt the baby and even cause you to lose the baby depends on how hard you fall.
Babies are well-protected in the stomach, enough so that if you bump your stomach into your dresser, you don’t have to panic. However, when the abdominal trauma is severe, the baby could be in danger.
You could always break bones, tear muscles, or end up with a traumatic head or spinal injury after falling off a bike.
At the very least, having to navigate around in a cast when pregnant is going to be a pain.
At most, your injuries could be so severe that the viability of your pregnancy could again be called into question.
Overexertion
It doesn’t seem to take much to tire you out anymore since you got pregnant. Even going up and down a flight of stairs can leave you winded.
If you try to ride your old cycling trail to completion now that you’re pregnant, you could push yourself too hard.
You’ll be overtired, which increases your risk of tripping and falling, both on your bike and off. Your poor ligaments can also be overstretched, which will mean painful days ahead for you!
Injuries
Loose ligaments also increase your injury risk. It doesn’t take nearly as much physical effort to hurt yourself as it did before you got pregnant, so you have to be extremely careful.
Sunburn
Although it’s the least of your concerns, I had to mention sunburn.
Spending time in the sunlight does feel great, but if you don’t apply pregnancy-safe sunscreen, then you could burn your skin.
Pregnant women are likelier to burn than non-pregnant women, even if sunburns aren’t something you contended with much in the past.
Your baby cannot be affected by sunburn, but the discomfort you’re experiencing is just one more on a long laundry list of pregnancy pains.
Tips for Riding a Bike During Pregnancy
Before you take your first bike ride when pregnant, here are some very valuable tips to keep in mind. They’re for the health of both you and your baby!
Always Wear a Helmet
Helmets might not look cute, but that doesn’t matter. They save lives, so you should always wear one, even if you’re going for a quick ride around the block.
You never know when you might feel unsteady on your bike!
While a helmet cannot prevent abdominal trauma, it can protect your head. It’s very important to never forget yours.
A lot of your body may change when pregnant, but the size of your cranium will not. Your old bike helmet should fit you just fine.
Ride on Even Terrain
Now is not the time for tricks, stunts, or off-roading. Casual bike rides on terrain that’s as level as possible are ideal for you and your growing baby.
Stick to sidewalks around your neighborhood, paved paths around your local park, and other reliably flat, level surfaces.
Even a concrete path with a dip could be enough to knock you off your bike, so do your best to steer clear.
Go Slow
You can still burn calories when riding a bike slowly. Your calorie burn won’t be as significant, but that’s okay.
I want to reiterate that you’re not trying to lose weight when pregnant unless your doctor told you to.
You’re just trying to maintain your weight, and that doesn’t require you to torch calories left, right, and center.
Take it slow and enjoy the ride!
Don’t Push Yourself Too Far
Shorter rides are also best when pregnant.
You already know that overexerting yourself can lead to fatigue and sore ligaments, both of which increase your chances of falling off your bike.
Listen to your body. If you feel sore or tired, then it’s time to turn around and head home.
Stay Hydrated
The risk of dehydration is great for anyone, especially in hot weather, but a pregnant woman is always at an elevated risk of dehydration.
Pack more water than you usually would, take frequent breaks, and make sure you’re drinking plenty of water.
Don’t Ride Alone
If the worst ever did happen and you were hurt when riding a bike, you want someone else with you. They can call 911 (or your emergency services equivalent) right away and get you the help you need.
Consider a Stationary Bike
You’ve changed your life a lot since getting pregnant to be more careful, and you can’t help but worry about falling off your bike.
Rather than forego cycling altogether, you might consider investing in a stationary bike.
The risk of falling off a stationary bike is never zero, but you’re a lot stabler on a stationary bike than a real bike.
Conclusion
Riding a bike when pregnant is a great way to maintain your weight, increase your mood, win back some of that energy you’ve been missing, and sleep more soundly at night.
The greatest risk to beware of is falling, so ride slowly and carefully!
