Exercise During Pregnancy | BTS of my Third Pregnancy with Midwife, Skyler Jacobs
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Motherhood is a journey—one that deserves confidence, grace, and the right support. In this episode, Victoria welcomes back Skyler Jacobs, certified nurse midwife and founder of Well and Worthy Co., to share her deeply personal and professional insights on staying active during pregnancy and embracing a holistic approach to prenatal care.
They dive into the key differences between midwifery and traditional medical models, uncovering how midwives champion pregnancy as a natural process—providing personalized, low-intervention care that nurtures both physical and emotional well-being. Plus, Skyler sheds light on how midwives proactively manage high-risk conditions like cholestasis while fostering stronger connections with their patients.
If you’ve ever wondered how to stay active during pregnancy and postpartum recovery, this conversation is for you. Victoria and Skyler break down common misconceptions about pelvic floor health, movement modifications for a stronger recovery, and why listening to your body is key. Tune in to learn how to move through pregnancy with confidence and discover Skyler’s course, Movement Through Labor and Delivery, designed to help women prepare for childbirth.Mama’s, you’re not going to want to miss this episode!
DISCLAIMER: This episode is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always check with your own doctor or midwife before making any changes to your exercise routine during pregnancy.
Get to know Skyler Jacobs
Skyler is a hospital-based certified nurse midwife out of Atlanta. She works with women both in the clinic before, during, and after their pregnancies, as well as in the hospital, attending vaginal deliveries for her patients. She is also the founder of Well and Worthy Co., an online resource for women walking through seasons of trying to conceive, pregnancy, birth and postpartum. Outside of work, Skyler is a new mom to her son, who is almost one, married to her best friend, and enjoys staying active, going to coffee shops, and traveling.
You can listen to Skyler’s first episode on The Branding Business School Podcast where she talks about the common misconceptions surrounding pregnancy, birth, and postpartum here!
Transitioning into Motherhood as a Certified Nurse, Midwife
Becoming a mom herself now, Skyler has been able to incorporate all the mom hacks, her experience - emotional and logical side of pregnancy, labor and delivery, along with what she already knew and practices as a midwife in a clinical sense. Now, Skyler finds herself empathizing with her patients on a whole new level, really being able to relate to what they are going through, and offer not only educational information but also tangible tips that she couldn’t do before going through it herself.
Traditional OB Prenatal vs. Midwifery Prenatal Care: Victoria’s Experience
Victoria was diagnosed with cholestasis at the end of her second pregnancy, about 37 weeks. Around 36 weeks was when she started noticing severe symptoms and by the time the test results came back, she was 37 weeks so all they did was an immediate induction. Overall, that whole experience was so off-putting to Victoria and was honestly really scary because she felt as if no one was taking it seriously except for her and her husband. So when she learned that she was pregnant with her third baby, she thought about what she may do differently. This is when Victoria thought of Skyler and all she had learned from just working on Skyler’s website, and that led her to switch her prenatal care to a midwife group.
Immediately, Victoria saw a difference in her appointments. The midwives took a lot of interest in her, her health before the pregnancy, how she’s feeling now, and just truly getting to know her and her history. The moment she told them about her cholestasis diagnosis, they took such an interest in that, where when Victoria was with the OB model of care, it was like everyone knew what the diagnosis was, but there was no plan and no concern. At Victoria’s 12th week appointment with the midwives, they had presented her with a plan of action for the cholestasis even though Victoria hasn’t even experienced symptoms so far this pregnancy. This helped Victoria feel confident knowing that there was a game plan in place, and it gave her the sense of feeling in charge of her own journey rather than just showing up to appointments and being told what to do.
OB Care vs. Midwifery Care: What’s the Difference?
The biggest difference that Skyler shares is how pregnancy is viewed and then how the care is provided for the pregnant woman. With the midwifery model of care, pregnancy is viewed as something that is a naturally occurring process that doesn’t need intervention unless it proves necessary. The medical (Western Medicine/ OB) model of care differs in that pregnancy is seen as a condition that needs treatment. That’s a very generalized overview but on a practical level, midwifery care tends to cater to longer visits, more personalized care, incorporating those natural, more holistic remedies alongside the Western medicine approaches. This challenges midwives to be really good at what they do because they need to know the difference if a pregnancy is progressing as expected or if it is outside the realms of normal, and would then require intervention. Midwives are the specialist when it comes to physiological births and this form of care is associated with lower cesarean rates, higher satisfaction with care, better outcomes for mom and baby, and less perineal trauma, to name a few. The analogy that Skyler shared is that midwives are going to come alongside you and walk through the journey with you, where OB care can feel like you’re walking the journey and they’re just telling you where to go.
Can Anyone See a Midwife for Prenatal Care?
Some practices will exclude high risk pregnancies if the practice is midwives only, but many practices have a collaborative model of care where both OBs and midwives work together. This allows for women who do have high-risk pregnancies to still have midwives for their delivery. If this does occur, essentially the OBs or Maternal Fetal Medicine doctors will do the majority of the ultrasounds and take in details of the pregnancy and make recommendations as far as monitoring goes, how frequent the scans need to be done, and timing of delivery. As midwives, they then carry out those recommendations, with the added bonus of the visits where there’s conversation about much more practical ways to prepare your body going through relief measures of symptoms.
Movement Through Labor and Delivery
As a former college athlete and athlete her entire life, movement in pregnancy and motherhood felt natural for Skyler, so she created a course called Movement Through Labor and Delivery. This course provides both childbirth education and practical preparation through labor flows. These series of movements focus on influencing your baby’s position and opening up levels of the pelvis and the pelvic floor in the weeks leading up to labor, and then even certain movements in labor which have been shown to decrease cesarean rates and have a more efficient labor. It’s important to Skyler that women feel empowered to influence their own labors because she believes that it’s important to optimize our health while pregnant and to continue to feel good in our bodies and mental health. There are a lot of changes happening and these movements can lead to better birth outcomes, which is something that everyone deserves.
Research Shows That Exercising While Pregnant Can Positively Impact
Research from the sixties and seventies focus on pregnancy being a time for rest. Exercise was discouraged because people were worried that it would cause miscarriage or put your baby in distress. Around the nineties, research started shifting and showed that exercise may actually reduce complications in and around pregnancy. Now, the research is remaining consistent with that of the nineties. It is still supported that exercise can positively impact the health of the mom, the baby, and the pregnancy, but more specifically, it can reduce the aches and pains that are felt when pregnant. It’s also important for cardiovascular health, decreasing the risk of complications like preeclampsia, high blood pressure, gestational diabetes, and even a cesarean birth.
A general recommendation for most pregnant women is to aim for 30 minutes of exercise, five days a week. A previous belief was to keep your heart rate below a certain level, but that recommendation is outdated, and now you should focus more on your ability to carry on a conversation in between labored breathing.
What Exercises Are Safe & What Are Not
In general, most non-contact sport exercises are safe in pregnancy and you may just have to make adjustments or modifications throughout the pregnancy. A big one is core exercises. This often needs modifications depending on your build and your strength, beginning when coning becomes evident or that exacerbation of the abdominal muscles separating. The other big one is exercises that involve you laying flat on your back. Overall, it’s not a one size fits all type of answer, all of us are so different, and our interests in exercise are different, and our experience of exercise coming into pregnancy can influence the comfort level and the modifications that we need to make along the way.
Competing in a Hyrox While Pregnant
If you don’t know what a Hyrox competition is, it’s basically a circuit-style format of short bursts of running (1000m or 0.62 miles) and then you go into a station. These stations are more geared towards functional fitness so think skier, rower, lunges, sled push, etc. In total, there are 8 kilometers of running and 8 functional workout stations to be completed. You can do this competition as an individual, with a partner, or as a relay.
At 24 weeks pregnant, Victoria competed in her very first Hyrox competition. This was something that she was training for prior to finding out that she was pregnant with her third baby girl, and of course she cleared it with her midwife, before actually deciding to still compete. She also did this competition with a partner, and so she could easily manage her heart rate and take the moments to rest if she needed to. Victoria is very cognizant of her changing body and some of the limitations that come with being in her second trimester, and there is one station that she knew that she would not be able to do, and so her partner will be fulfilling that whole station for them.
Check out the images below from Victoria’s competition!
Warning Signs to Stop or Modify a Workout
When exercising, if you notice vaginal bleeding, feeling dizzy or faint, any chest pain, a persistent headache, any sort of contractions regardless of your gestational age, or amniotic fluid leakage, you should stop what you’re doing. You know your body best, so you’re going to know when something is off and if your mom gut, or intuition, tells you to stop, then honor that. It’s always best to be safe. Stop what you’re doing and talk with your provider.
Exercises For an Easier Birth
This is a great section that’s inside Skyler’s course – prepping the body for labor. Skyler, along with her friend and pelvic floor therapist, Dr. May Hughes, created labor flows or series of movements and exercises that anyone who’s in the course can follow in their last five to six weeks of pregnancy to help their babies get into that head down position. An overly tight pelvic floor can potentially make labor more difficult, or slow things down, because your muscles do not know how to relax properly. A common misconception is that women believe they need to strengthen their pelvic floor or perform Kegels prior to birth, but it’s actually the exact opposite of what you want. Instead, learning how to lengthen and relax the pelvic floor is key.
The Style of Training Impacts Recovery
The things that you do or don’t do in pregnancy can definitely impact your postpartum experience and the way your body heals. In the third trimester you want to do what is best for your body and focus more on lengthening out the muscles, but still continuing to strengthen them, to allow your body to be prepared for birth.
Mistakes Women Make Jumping Back Into Exercise After Birth
Skyler shares that she often sees that women don’t intentionally move during the first six weeks after birth, and then once they are cleared, they will jump back into exercise. This can lead to injury, inappropriate recruitment of muscles and overcompensation for some areas. Early and frequent movement, like breath work and reconnecting with the deep core, or gentle stretching, during the early weeks before the six week mark, is actually more beneficial and can allow for a more fluid return to exercise and a better healing journey postpartum.
Another mistake that women make is doing the wrong exercises too early. For example, Victoria shares about how she made the mistake after her first birth of starting to run again at around seven or eight weeks. Returning to running is more along the lines of the 12 week mark, but in that time you can still do incremental strengthening exercises of the deep core of the pelvic floor, of the quads, of all the little muscle groups that are required for the bigger movement of running. It’s always a stepwise approach. You need to rebuild the foundation, because although it’s not necessarily an injury, these muscles have been vastly changed from what your body was prepregnancy and pre-birth, so you have to retrain those muscles and strengthen them to return back to a level of where you were before.
What’s Next for Well and Worthy Co.
Now that Skyler has gone through the entire process of trying to conceive, being pregnant, giving birth, and the postpartum period, she is releasing her first e-guide called Trimester Zero. This is a step-by-step guide for women who are thinking about becoming pregnant to provide them with tangible tips and practical steps to prepare for pregnancy in those two to three months before conception. Trimester Zero will be available this summer (2025) so be sure to follow Well and Worthy Co. so you don’t miss it!
Key Quotes
“It doesn't make sense to me, that you wouldn't move your body in a way to prepare for an event like that, knowing it's going to be the hardest thing that you've probably done or will do.”
Skyler Jacobs
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