By Dr. Natasha LaBeaud Anzures (Author), Marco Anzures (Author)

I decided to write Pregruncy as soon as I found out that I was pregnant. Like many others, I have always been fascinated with the notion of exercise during pregnancy, and what the entire pregnancy experience would be like. Years before I ever became pregnant, I would read any articles that came my way about the topic. I was never the person who said that they were going to have a family, or became starry-eyed when thinking about cradling my stomach during the third trimester. No, I have always been more curious about the process of pregnancy. Curious about the stages of growth and how different people cope with the cards that they are dealt. But, I noticed that there were few resources available for the elite runner trying to navigate the world of training during pregnancy. There were morsels of details deep in Instagram posts, but there was no consistent stream of information available that showed what each day of training looked like, and that was what I was on a quest to share.
My husband, who is also my coach, and I decided that I would use my own personal experiences to help others navigate pregnancy. While I understand that this is a very small n-value (n=1) with just me, I also knew that I had not found a resource that chronicled each day of training and the pregnancy experience. I kept thinking about how helpful it would be to know what the whole journey looked like for someone, as opposed to snippets along the way. I also know that my experiences with pregnancy are my own and may not match someone else’s. I wanted to see what was possible during pregnancy. I had heard so many notions about what a woman can and can’t do while they are baking a baby for over nine months, and most of the guidance errs on the ‘can’t’ side without much evidence supporting it.
Marco and I decided that he would also keep his own notes during this process so that we could have two perspectives. He never read my notes during the pregnancy, and I never read his. The notes were combined later so that the “coach’s notes” could be sprinkled in throughout.
What we learned is that the human body can do some amazing things and withstand an incredible amount of pain. We also learned that the healthcare system in the United States has a long way to go in terms of care for pregnant women.

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