Staying Active, Starting Again: Exercise in pregnancy and postpartum

01/18/24 • 44 min

Exercise. Whether you’re an athlete or just depend on activity for a little dose of sanity, the pregnancy and postpartum periods can knock you sideways and make you feel estranged from your own body.

Today on ParentData, Megan Roche — researcher, podcaster, and trail runner machine — joins to discuss how to ease back into activity postpartum, why women’s health is understudied, and the value of carbohydrates. But the conversation goes beyond just sports. It’s also about how to return to the things you love to do after becoming a parent — and feel a little more like yourself.

Subscribe to ParentData.org for free access to new articles every week on data-driven pregnancy and parenting.

Subscribe to ParentData.org for free access to new articles every week on data-driven pregnancy and parenting.

Previous Episode

Learning to Speak: Understanding the babbling black box

Through coos and cries, babbles and thbbbbts, babies are learning how to communicate from the earliest days of life. Language development is a magical opportunity to watch a child learn to engage with both you and the world. It also feels highly consequential, and for so many parents, it’s an incredibly stressful milestone. Watching your kid learn to talk is at once neat and frustrating and harrowing, all the more so when we realize that even the experts are often scratching their heads about how it all works.

Today on ParentData, Professor Michael Frank joins to explore the question of how children learn to speak. We talk about how language develops, the difference between receptive and expressive language, whether the pandemic had a significant impact, and which language is the hardest for kids to learn (spoiler alert: it’s Danish).

Subscribe to ParentData.org for free access to new articles every week on data-driven pregnancy and parenting.

Next Episode

Let’s Talk About Sex (After) Baby: Staying connected over the long term

Sex in long-term relationships, often after kids — it’s something many people struggle with. When we did a big ParentData survey on your sex lives, a lot of you expressed unhappiness, stress, and pressure about how much sex was the “right” amount, whether you were behind (or too far ahead!).

Today on ParentData, Emily Nagoski — sex researcher and author of “Come Together: The Science (and Art!) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections” — is here to talk about taking that pressure off and redefining normal. We dive into the anxiety long-term couples face, how much sex everyone else is really having and how little that should matter for you and your partner, and how to evolve sexually... together.

Subscribe to ParentData.org for free access to new articles every week on data-driven pregnancy and parenting.