Pregnacy and Dancing

[albanaich]

Life goes on as they say, the river runs on.

A friend of mine is 2 months pregnant and we (it came up in discussion) know from other friends that professional and serious amateur dancers often have difficult childbirths, anyone have any information on this. Any solutions and advice you can offer?

[elisedance]

thats interesting - are there any hard stats

[pinkstuff]

Life goes on as they say, the river runs on.

A friend of mine is 2 months pregnant and we (it came up in discussion) know from other friends that professional and serious amateur dancers often have difficult childbirths, anyone have any information on this. Any solutions and advice you can offer?

Go with the flow    Don't worry about things as don't know what is going to happen and best plan is to aim for a healthy baby & mother.  I don't know anything specific about dancers but being physically fit is usually a good thing 

(oh, and congratulations to her  )

[pinkstuff]

Brief literature search and I found one paper suggesting harder pregnancies/labour in ballet dancers..interesting, I wonder why?

[albanaich]

It's apparently to do with musle tone and control.

In childbirth you have to make your muiscles do the opposite of what they do in dancing. I found this article.

http://demi-l.org/childbirth-athletic-woman.html

[samina]

My guess is the pelvic & hip muscles of a good standard dancer wouldn't find the kind of release required in childbirth too strange... Accomplished standard dancers are used to keeping it all loose "down there".

Latin dancers... dunno. They gotta keep everything tight enuf to squeek out diamonds, lolz.

[elisedance]

maybe you can be too toned...
was that an issue just for dancers or also for athletes?

[albanaich]

It's apprently an issue for atheletes as well, but those most seriously affected seem to be high level dancers and horse riders,

http://www.radmid.demon.co.uk/pelvicfloor.htm