As part of our guest post series on the heart this month I am delighted to bring you this piece by Julie Watson, inspiring entrepreneur and mom of three. Whether you've experienced pregnancy firsthand or watched someone you love experience it, you will know that it is a hugely transformational time. Julie captures beautifully the physical and emotional effects that pregnancy has on the heart.

The Heart of Pregnancy by Julie Watson

“You can change your life by changing your heart.” This statement is never more true for anyone than for a pregnant woman. In fact, a pregnant woman doesn’t actually have the choice of whether to change her heart, emotionally or physically. It will happen. Her heart changes just by virtue of attempting to grow another being inside her body. It’s something very awesome to understand, and unfortunate that most of us don’t. The physiological and emotional transformations of the heart during pregnancy are, indeed, life changing.

What You Don’t See:

 Inside your body, your heart is actually getting bigger. As the uterus enlarges and the diaphragm is raised, the heart is displaced upward and somewhat to the left. It will increase approximately 12% in size.  When you think about all the other organs that eventually get stuffed up into the thoracic cavity, along with a big baby growing below it, that’s a lot of heart! 

 Perhaps the most striking maternal physiologic alteration occurring during pregnancy is the increase in the blood volume. Your blood volume will increase by an astounding 50% to ensure that the developing baby is well-supplied with oxygen and nutrients.  Extra volume also compensates for maternal blood loss during delivery. By the end of the pregnancy the uterus receives one fifth of the mother's blood supply. That’s incredible!

 Your resting heart rate increases from 70 beats per minute to 85 to 90 beats per minute.  It’s fairly common to have low blood pressure, which can result in lightheadedness. Your heart is beating faster to pump the large quantity of blood all the way through your body and into the placenta. So as a mom-to-be you can feel your heart beating faster and know that this is essential in supplying nourishment to your baby. And the heart rate doesn’t actually return to normal levels until about six weeks after delivery.

What You Might See: 

 The emotional changes of the heart during pregnancy cannot be measured in weight or percentage. It feels as though your heart is actually expanding with care, protection and unconditional love for your growing baby. The heart goes through major transitions as a woman flows through the 40 weeks of pregnancy. 

 Generally the initial excitement and shock to the heart once you discover you are pregnant is followed by a protective fear and caution through the first trimester.  Once into the second trimester the heart is once again open, without fear of miscarriage or pending test results. This time period is particularly memorable during most first pregnancies. It’s a time when energy returns, growth of the body solidifies growth of the fetus, and warmth and tenderness from others is at its peak. Your heart is glowing from the inside out. 

 The final stage of pregnancy can be a time for the heart to embrace what is to come.  Though one can never really be prepared for the arrival of a child, the heart is busy making room to accommodate enough love supply for another entire being.  You might say it’s comparable to the 50% increase in blood supply...

 Inside or out, whether the physical organ or emotional organ, it’s inevitable that through pregnancy a woman’s heart is going to change. Understanding this and embracing it allows you to enjoy the changes in your life along with the changes of your heart.

 “Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.”

-Jean Jacques Rousseau.

Julie Watson is the Owner of AfterGlow Health & Fitness in Toronto’s Hillcrest Village: training for women prenatal, postnatal and beyond.  Julie’s 3 children are the reason she strives everyday to achieve optimal health and wellness.  You can read more from Julie by following her blog or reading her monthly column OptiMOM in Tonic Magazine. 

I am excited to welcome our guest blogger this week, Brigid Dineen, who offers us a fresh perspective on fitness and the reasons why we exercise. I hope you enjoy her insights as much as I do. 

Fitness from the Heart

I’ve been reading “The Art of Happiness” by the Dalai Lama and Dr. Howard C. Cutler. It never ceases to amaze me how spiritual and philosophical minds can give straightforward, practical insight for improving our lives. The book begins with the premise that the purpose of human life is to pursue happiness. But we get confused, they say, by mixing up the idea of pleasure with that of happiness.

In the book, happiness is defined as a sustainable, on-going state whereas pleasure is something that happens only in the moment. Things that give us pleasure can ultimately lead towards happiness, or not. For instance: even though the pleasure one might get from shopping for a new wardrobe can be exhilarating, the indulgence might actually take us a step away from happiness if it was one we couldn’t afford but did it anyway. Other activities that bring pleasure, however, like catching up with an old friend over tea or taking a yoga class, can also help to bring our lives into balance and, as a result, contribute to our happiness. The Dalai Lama recommends minimizing those pleasures that lead us away from happiness, and increasing those that bring us closer to it. This may seem extremely simple, but there’s a profundity to it that resonates with me deeply.

As I read about pleasure versus happiness, I couldn’t help but notice how this applies to our quest for improved health and fitness. As a personal trainer, I can’t even count the number of times that clients come to me mainly motivated by the desire to move away from their current state, rather than by the desire to move towards happiness. These perspectives may be two sides of the same coin, but they are vastly different.

If our focus is purely on moving away from our current state, on being someone different than who we are, think about how this desire affects our sense of motivation. I would argue that it is far more fun and motivating to concentrate on improving our lifestyle because we love ourselves and know that we deserve to feel healthy and have more energy than it is to replay negative messages about ourselves or to spend our energy wishing we were somebody else.

Too often, we think of exercising and eating well as inconveniences. If we remind ourselves about how they are inextricably linked to our life balance - our sense of happiness - then we are that much more likely to be successful. This all takes practice, of course. Our thoughts are very deeply ingrained, and creating and accepting new thought patterns isn’t always easy.

It’s important to remember that eating well and exercising can be sources of both pleasure and happiness. Healthy food doesn’t have to be boring, and most of us truly enjoy at least one form of physical activity. Rather than looking outside ourselves for a plan, we need to turn inwards and tune in to healthy pleasures. Trying new healthy dishes, or signing up for a dance lesson can bring us a kind of pleasure we may not have felt for some time.

In the early years of my own quest for health and fitness, I became stuck in a cycle of sacrifice and deprivation. I felt unhappy despite the fact my clothes were getting looser. I knew there had to be an alternative, and so I wrote my personal Joy List. The list consisted of 5 things that bring me pleasure, and also happiness. I made a point to do one or more of them each day. From singing and dancing, to reading and writing, I found that building this habit shifted my mindset. I began to nurture myself more through my thoughts and actions, and learned that health and happiness are best pursued hand in hand. Take a moment to think of those things that bring you joy, and are also good for you. You might even think of what brought you joy as a child. Write these down, and pick one to do today.

What’s on your Joy List?

Brigid Dineen runs Moving Stillness Personal Fitness. She is a certified personal trainer and yoga teacher working in the Toronto area providing private, small group and corporate fitness and yoga lessons. Brigid is passionate about helping her clients create meaningful and lasting change. She feels most fulfilled when helping others to get healthy, stress less, create joy, find balance and learn to make healthy decisions out of love for themselves.