29 Weeks + Does Running Affect our Fertility?

Interesting topic! I tend to agree that healthy running shouldn’t make someone infertile. I’m currently pregnant with my third and I struggled a little bit at first because of some changes I was going through with my first night shift job. I firmly believe sticking to running/strength training/eating enough (and prayers) was what relieved those stress related issues and allowed me to get pregnant. Just my thoughts though!

Yes to the leg cramps!! I am 33 wks and they probably started around 28 weeks. I have been eating half a banana before I go to bed and that seems to keep them away :) and that dang glucose test!! I failed the one hour and had to take the 3 hour one- that was definitely no fun!

Running and training hard did not effect me, low body fat did. Changed that I could actually train harder and get preggo.

Hi Janae! Love your blog; we’ve been trying to get pregnant with number 2 for six months, no luck yet, and I’ve started to wonder about the training thing even though I was working hard and fell easily with number one. Appreciate your fertility comments on the post; it’s been kind of bittersweet following you on this journey while trying myself!

Random question though I always want to ask you. How do you plan for, achieve, strive for, nutrition for your kids? My son is 2, I do my best to provide healthful stuff, but I also love to share treats with him like I know you do as well with Brooke and Knox… how do you feel like it’s going, the healthy eating thing? Do you feel like it’s more about modeling at this age and don’t stress about their actual intake? Just generally curious… I am an eating disorder sufferer too – in recovery now! – and I know how valuable it is to keep that healthy relationship with food… I think about this a lot!

Glad you passed the test! I have had 3 friends fail it :( …and they also agreed, the drink is bad haha.

This is purely anecdotal, but I was training back-to-back marathons when we decided to try for our first, after having been on low-estrogen birth control for 8 years. I noticed my cycles were getting longer and longer and some months skip all together (I had two or three months I’d skip for 45+ days). I don’t know that I can entirely attribute it to exercise, but it took 10 months to conceive and the month after I ran my last marathon, it happened! I didn’t struggle with “fertility” in the clinical sense but I do think for me it did impact my cycle, asking my body to do so much.

Janae! I did Calcium and Magnesium for leg/hip cramps. I’ve got a short torso, so little man was pretty cramped in my uterus and I ended up having bad back labor too.

We struggled for 7.5 years, and running was my go to for the stress of infertility. It helped get my mind off of what my body was not able to achieve. I trained and ran my first marathon (2015) while undergoing 3 rounds of IUI’s. The week after my marathon I got an email from another infertility sister and she said now that I’m done with my marathon I should step back and focus on getting pregnant and stop running. My infertility diagnosis was low ovarian reserve, poor egg quality, and endometriosis. All of which are not affected by the amount I was running. It was really hurtful that someone would tell me to stop running completely. I think you need to go off of how your body feels. Yes, if you are struggling to get pregnant and running a ton of miles each week, you should take a step back and not run so much or as hard. BUT you need to listen to your body. I’m prone to injury and training for my marathon, I never once got up to 50 miles in a week and barely hit 50 miles one month. I was doing it to finish, not doing it for time. I think it all just depends, if you are that concerned about your training you should talk to your doctor.

I had the lemon-lime (tastes like a flat sprite) for the first test and I failed and had to do the 3 hour! Which was horrible! BUT I passed!

I definitely got leg cramps while pregnant. Drinking more water helped me.

Just looking at those bottles of the orange drink for the glucose test makes me nauseous! Luckily, I did a “food glucose test” and just ate a breakfast prescribed by my midwife and then took the blood test at my appointment. Not too bad!

Hi Janae, long time reader! I know doctors ask if you want a flu shot and tdap, I hope you will do research on these as they have not been tested on pregnant women and the effects are not known. It actually says so on the insert that comes in the flu shot box (not the cdc handout) there are many many stories online of still births occurring days after receiving the shots.

Thanks for talking about this! It’s my first time commenting, but I’m 33 weeks and struggled with infertility. Mine was due to hypothalamic amenorrhea, which was caused by excessive exercise and restrictive eating. It was hard to admit that was the issue, but the blood work and the symptoms don’t lie! You hit the nail on the head when you said the training won’t effect you as long as you’re nourishing your body enough, which I know I wasn’t doing! After seeing a nutritionist and a fertility doctor, we were able to get pregnant on our first IUI. We are beyond lucky and happy, but I also learned a lot and am making sure I’m fueling myself enough for both myself and especially for my baby. This is such an important topic, thabjs for talking about it!

Also, the leg cramps are definitely a pregnant thing! I get them too! Bananas help :)

43 miles while pregnant?! I am not pregnant and am barely getting 25 in right now…………..way to go!

I cut down on my training significantly to get pregnant, but that was mostly because it took us so long. I do have a past history of amenorrhea, but when we started trying to get pregnant, I had regular periods for a few years. We went through numerous infertility treatments and surgeries (unrelated to amenorrhea), so I thought that training hard would have been pointless — why run 50 miles one week only to have to cut down the following due to a surgery or IUI/IVF treatment? I also couldn’t really put big races on my schedule because of it all. So, I simply ran for fun and to feel good.
I’m now 34 weeks, and just stopped running last week. I’m terrified of tripping and falling, and once again have the mentality of “why bother?” I have no race on the horizon, and will have to take at least 6 weeks off after the baby is born anyway. So, I walk and lift light weights to keep myself active and healthy, and spend the time I would have spent running simply enjoying the experience of being pregnant :) Running will always be there for me, and I know I’ll get back at it eventually!
I’m actually sleeping well. I do NP school during the week (day schedule), and then work 12 hour night shifts on the weekends, so switching from normal sleeping to day sleeping is challenging, but that’s tough even when I’m not pregnant. I haven’t had leg cramps, luckily. And that Glucola drink tasted like melted Otter Pops to me. Not heavenly, but not too bad, I guess.
You look fantastic, Janae!

Saw this and thought of you :)

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