DVD Review: Bedrest Fitness

Bedrest Fitness is an exercise DVD by Darline Turner-Lee, a Physician Assistant and ACSM Exercise Specialist in Austin, TX who specializes in women's health.

I've never been on bedrest, so I can only imagine how frightening, boring, enervating, and disempowering it must be for a pregnant woman. Worrying about the baby constantly, and being stuck in one place and unable to do all your normal things must be just hideous. Then add in the fact that you know your body is weakening because you can't move your muscles like you usually do. How are you supposed to recover from birth and take care of your new baby if you don't have good muscle tone?

That's the problem that Darline addresses with this workout DVD.

The DVD overall is just lovely. Even the menu screen is soothing. Darline has a calming, reassuring manner and explains every exercise as she goes through it. She points out a few moves that may not be safe for women on the strictest bedrest so they can avoid them, while women who can move around a little more can do the entire sequence. She works on arms and shoulder, legs, back, and core, using an exercise band to provide resistance.

My favorite part about the DVD is that Darline is a real woman. She's not a perky exercise instructor. She's big and pregnant in the video, and when she scoots around on the bed to get into position for the next exercise you recognize the effort it's taking her to haul another person with her.

The pace is gentle and easy. I think real type As would get impatient with the pace, but for women stuck in bed anyway, the pace makes sure they're not overexerting or doing anything they shouldn't be doing.

I'm so thankful someone's done an exercise video for women on bedrest during pregnancy, and so pleased that this one is so thorough and encouraging. It would be a stellar gift for a friend on bedrest, as it is truly useful and will help the mom-to-be maintain her physical health so her recovery from delivery is faster and her first few months of caring for her baby are easier on her body. You can order the DVD here on Darline's website for US$29, which includes domestic shipping and a rubber exercise band (the only equipment you need to do the exercises).

Comments

[susannah]

Sounds great. I was on bedrest for four months last fall, much of it strict. It was completely worth it- and Benjamin is a healthy bouncy 8-month old now, but together with an emergency c-section, it was definitely tough at times. I tried to stretch and do isometrics, but it would have been great to have a DVD to play along with! I'm still trying to get back in shape...

[nic]

Hmm, my understanding is that there is no evidence to show that bed rest is helpful in pregnancy, and may in fact be harmful (risk of developing blood clots). There was an interesting show on on this on BBC Radio 4 recently: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/03/2007_15_fri.shtml
Rather than get a DVD, it might be better to do some reading and get a second opinion.

[electriclady]

Oh, I wish I'd had this last year. Four months of modified bedrest (plus five months of severely restricted activity and no exercise before that) plus a c-section made my postpartum recovery tough. I got out of breath walking half a block, and forget stairs--it was well over a month before I could tackle stairs normally.

I was always skeptical of the benefits of bedrest, too, and certainly it did me plenty of psychological harm. But when you're actually in that situation, and when you can observe for yourself the effects that increased activity has on your body (bleeding, frequent contractions, dilation), and you're already nervous being pregnant after infertility, and you have a documented high-risk situation, it is hard to defy your doctor and decide you don't need to be on bedrest.

[susannah]

Yes, my doctor and I talked about the no-evidence-for-bedrest thing. She suggested I try it anyway, since I was having bad cramping and contractions at 26 weeks. In her experience it sometimes helps, but only if you really rest for at least 3-5 days. As in, bathroom breaks only, no cheating. Wow, it was hard. But when I finally really did it, the cramping and contractions disappeared. I got up, they came back. Went back to bed, they disappeared. If I rested for a good while, I could buy myself some contraction-free activity, but not for long. And so it went. I stopped at 37 weeks, and gave birth a few days later. Who knows if it helped? It seemed to in my case.

I also used an herb, "cramp bark", with my OB's blessing. It stopped the contractions cold for about half a day. Has anyone else out there heard of this?

[alice]

This DVD sounds great! I was on modified bedrest from 28-36 weeks for preterm labor, and even that was most definitely no fun. The no evidence of bed rest being helpful is a tough one. My father-in-law and sister are both OBs, he says he never prescribes bedrest for that reason (but does tell women to take it easy), she occasionally does (and had to be on it too w/ twins).
I have to give my own annecdotal experience, when I was active, I would contract, when I took it easy, I did not. And I think if you've had problems w/ your pregnancy or in the past, you want to know that you are doing everything possible, even if that is hard on you physically (not to mention mentally, emotionally, psychologically, for your partner etc.etc.) and it would be a lot to handle to have something go wrong and not have listened to your doctor's advice. Like Susannah, I don't know if it helped in my case either, but it seemed to, and I ended up delivering at term. Maybe I would have anyway, but you just don't know, so why risk it?
But an excercise DVD that is gentle and easy to do in bed would've been great, that would alleviate the concerns over thrombosis, or even just to use up some time every day, those were loooong days in bed.

[Kathy]

Whether or not bed rest is effective, whether or not a woman could do the exercises, whether or not she'd enjoy the video . . . a lot depends on WHY she's on bedrest.

I had severe preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome. At 26 weeks I did four weeks of moderately strict bedrest at home followed by two weeks in the hospital, in bed, on my left side. The hospital physical therapist gave me some exercises, but I never got a chance to do them. Just rolling around trying to get the fetal monitors positioned well could nudge my blood pressure into the danger zone. So, exercise videos were out for me, and the sight of big, pregnant women who were likely to go full-term infuriated me.

And yet, I would have appreciated the thoughtfulness of the gift if someone had sent the video to me. Bedrest is hell, and very isolating.

The best gift? A laptop. I was very lucky that our hospital had Wi-Fi. Phone calls were very difficult in the hospital, because someone was always coming in to check my vitals or draw blood, and when I actually managed to get a little bit of sleep, I needed the rest. And then we were in the NICU, which needs to stay as quiet as possible. But email could always be done quietly, and in the middle of the night.

(BTW, both baby and I are now healthy.)

[Sprengblingbling]

Unless you have been faced with bedrest to prevent a loss or an extremely premature baby, there is no way anyone understands. And even if you got a second opinion, and something went wrong, you would never forgive yourself.

I did four months of strict bedrest with an incompetent cervix with my first pregnancy. Every single one of my doctors told me I could deliver any day, beginning at 20 weeks. Gravity is not your friend if your cervix is thinned and dilating, so you have to have a cerclage and/or be on bedrest. Lucky me, I had a cerclage and bedrest.

The video sounds awesome and I am so glad someone out there is thinking about the high-risk ladies. I would have welcomed the gift when I was there, although I did have a physical therapist give me some exercises during my three weeks in the hospital, which was helpful.

I did find I was not that out of shape when the baby came. I was allowed all activity to resume once the stitch came out at 36 weeks and I didn't deliver until 38.5, so I did everything and anything I could outside of lying down in those two weeks! I also think being in good shape (pilates five days a week) before pregnancy helped my body retain a little muscle memory.

[Kathy]

Oh, I was very atrophied by the bedrest. Then again, I was a physical wreck. :-)

[me]

I've never done bedrest... how does bathing work with that? Does it depend on the degree of bedrest? Can you get up long enough to shower?

[GS]

I began having painful contractions and was hours later diagnosed with an "incompetent" cervix, which is a horrible way of describing a horrible idea: my cervix entirely effaced. This, of course, is what directly precedes dilation, which immediately precedes deliver. I was not quite 6 months pregnant and my chances of delivering "at any moment" were statistically quite high.

The team of physicians at UW Medical Center (one of the strongest in the nation) did not hesistate to place me on strict bedrest, something doctors have been doing for year (i.e. "laying in" hospitals). It made sense to me: without a cervix, the fetus was just waiting to drop. Zero gravity is the logical goal here.

Had someone suggested that I get a second opinion because bedrest had not been "proven" to work, I would've pointed out the obvious: it hasn't been proven because there are likely few women who would volunteer to test the age-old theory by defying the bedrest order.

Had someone suggested that lying in bed for that long might lead to blood clots, I would (and did) risk it anyway. There are a lot of exercises one can do in bed (I'd know, I spent three months doing them) that work muscles and circulate blood.

I'm sorry, but when you're actually pregnant and you actually experience the sheer terror of these preterm complications, PBS documentaries and speculation just don't cut it. There's too much at stake to start "theorizing" about the benefits of what has worked, hard-core evidence or not, for centuries. It makes perfect sense that for some of us, our bodies need rest as they prepare for the delivery of a new one.

GS

[GS]

PS: I should also mention that at one point during my hospital bedrest I was sent home because the contractions disappeared (I only got up to use the bathroom and took ten-minute sit down showers, once a day). I was told that at home I had to adhere to the same rules: "strict," not "modified" bedrest. I cheated -- got up to do the dishes or putter for a few minutes around my cluttered (wife-less) apartment. Ten days later: my water broke. I'm convinced it was the bedrest that was helping and it was the bedrest that managed to keep me pregnant for 36 weeks.

[Kathy]

"me" asked:
>I've never done bedrest... how does bathing
>work with that? Does it depend on the degree
>of bedrest? Can you get up long enough to
>shower?

Bedrest could be anything from "get up to use the bathroom, take one shower a day, or quickly fix a snack, but then sit down with your feet up the rest of the day" to "don't get out of bed for any reason" in which case you're into bedpan and sponge bath territory. Some women aren't allowed to stand and shower, but their husbands can carry them to the bathtub.

At one point, I was allowed to try an hour a day sitting up at my computer desk. That lasted less than a week before my OB revoked it.