As The Bump editorial team’s resident pregnant woman (I’m 20 weeks as of yesterday — halfway there!), I get the pretty awesome job of being a guinea pig for the latest products. After all, someone’s got to see what works and what doesn’t, right? So of course, I wanted to pass along a few of my favorites so far.

What are your favorite pregnancy products?

Plus, more from The Bump:

Top 6 Pregnancy Skin Issues (and How to Deal)

Is Your Beauty Routine Safe for Pregnancy?

Sneaky (and Cheap!) Ways to Stretch Your Maternity Wardrobe

There are so many reasons to exercise throughout life, but while you are pregnant it is particularly important to keep moving. Even if you didn’t exercise before pregnancy, as long as your doctor approves, you should start a prenatal fitness program in order to increase your odds of a healthy pregnancy and birth experience!

So, before you reach for that gym bag, here are the five main reasons every expectant moms should exercise regularly:

1. Fewer aches and pains during pregnancy. Most of the “normal” discomforts associated with pregnancy result from postural changes and muscle tightness that can be reduced or eliminated with the appropriate exercises.

2. Reduced chances of a Cesarean section. A recent study in Spain concluded that exercising at least 3 times a week throughout pregnancy reduces your risk for a C-section birth.

3. Fewer pounds added during pregnancy. Not surprisingly, women who exercise regularly while pregnant gain less weight than women who do not. That means less baby weight to take off after baby comes.

4. Rapid recovery after childbirth.  With increased muscle tone from months of exercising the muscles weakened during pregnancy and less weight to lose afterward, women who perform targeted prenatal exercise regularly throughout pregnancy recover more quickly after giving birth.

5. Improved overall fitness for years after giving birth. A long-term study recently showed that women who had exercised during pregnancy maintained long-term fitness and a healthy weight and had reduced cardiovascular risk when they reached menopause when compared to women who did not exercise while pregnant.

What’s your favorite prenatal fitness routine?

Plus, more from The Bump:

Your Pregnancy Workout Routine!

Is It Safe to Exercise While Pregnant?

How to Fit Prenatal Exercise Into Your Busy Schedule

Have you ever experienced that embarrassing leaking phenomena while sneezing or coughing or laughing hard? It’s called stress incontinence, and it’s a serious matter for many pregnant women – especially in the later stages of pregnancy when the baby’s weight increases, pressing more heavily upon the bladder and overstretching the pelvic floor muscles.

It’s considered a common side effect of pregnancy, but new research shows that it can be prevented with just a few minutes of exercise a few times a week, a breakthrough that could spare women everywhere the embarrassment of trying too late to stop the inevitable escape of a few drops.

A study at a Madrid university that was published in the February 2013 issue of Neurourology and Urodynamics, followed 169 women throughout pregnancy. The control group received regular prenatal care but no structured exercise program. The exercise group participated in a 55-60 minute prenatal fitness class 3 times a week which included 10 minutes of pelvic floor muscle training (Kegel exercises). The study measured the women at 10 to 14 weeks gestation and again at 36-39 weeks for frequency of urinary incontinence. The results were undeniable: the exercise group exhibited significantly less urinary incontinence than the control group.

Now there is one more reason to exercise regularly throughout pregnancy and to incorporate pelvic floor exercises into your prenatal exercise routine. Many prenatal programs — especially those designed by prenatal exercise specialists — will include pelvic floor muscle training. If not, you can add your own, here’s how:

1. As you perform any exercise in tune with your breath, on the exhalation draw inward and upward in the pelvic floor.

2. Hold that strong contraction through the following inhalation and release as you exhale.

3. Incorporate Kegel exercises anywhere you are: while stopped at traffic lights, waiting in line in the grocery, or while practicing another important pregnancy exercise, the full squat position.

If you have trouble mastering a strong contraction or knowing if you are contracting the correct muscles, ask your doctor or midwife at your next appointment.

How did prenatal exercise help you?

Plus, more from The Bump:

Is Peeing When I Sneeze Normal?

Signs of Pregnancy — Frequent Urination

Top 10 Pregnancy Fears (and Why You Shouldn’t Worry)

Back pain is no laughing matter for expectant mothers. Nearly every woman is affected by lumbar pain at some point during pregnancy, a pain that can limit mobility and put a damper on the pregnancy experience.

The physical changes in your pregnant body contribute to the propensity for lumbar pain. As the uterus expands upward out of the pelvis, the weight of the growing baby causes the body’s center of gravity to shift upward and forward. To compensate for the shift in center of gravity, the pelvis tilts forward, causing the low back to arch in a swayback curve, called a lordosis. The pelvic tilt shortens the lumbar muscles, causing them to tighten and increasing the likelihood of a painful spasm. The joints between the vertebrae in lumbar spine lose mobility due to the muscles tightness, creating an achy stiffness in the lower back.

While the physical changes during pregnancy are inevitable, low back pain doesn’t have to be. Here is a simple sequence of exercises that will help you ward off lumbar discomfort throughout pregnancy and beyond:

1. Forward Bends

Standing with feet wider than your hips to make room for your belly, inhale as you take your arms out to the sides and up overhead then exhale as you bend forward from the waist and release the head and hands toward the floor. Hang there for three deep breaths then inhale to lift your chest to straighten your spine, squeezing the shoulder blades together to flatten the back. Exhale to release back into the forward bend. Inhale back up to flat back, exhale release. Repeat 10 times.

2. Standing Pelvic Rocking

From the Forward Bend, roll up slowly to stand, keeping the knees bent and placing your hands on your thighs above the knees. Inhale to lift your chin and your tailbone upward back behind you. Exhale to tuck your tailbone under while you drop your gaze to look at the knees. Repeat 10 times with slow and controlled breaths.

3. Tail wagging

Slowly make your way down to hands and knees. Inhale deeply to begin. As you exhale look over your right shoulder, moving the shoulder toward the hip and the hip toward the shoulder. Inhale back to center and exhale to the left. Repeat 10 times to each side with slow and controlled breaths.

4. Child’s Pose

From hands and knees position, open your knees wide then sit back toward your heels, keeping the arms outstretched in front of you. Breath 10 deep breaths in this delightful resting position. Practice your pelvic floor (Kegel) exercises while you rest in child’s pose.

Follow the sequence in the video below. For best results, repeat this sequence two or three times throughout the day.

Stay tuned for the next edition in this series!

How do you deal with your pregnancy aches and pains?

Plus, more from The Bump:

Ways to Deal With Pregnancy’s Aches and Pains

10 Things They Should Really Warn You About Before You Get Pregnant

Best Ways to Fit Exercise Into Your Schedule When You’re Pregnant

Ladies! I have great news for you! There is a way to change your attitude that will soon change your body,so get ready to bring out your inner Giselle or Charlize Theron! (Seriously!)

Trust me, this will take little effort on your part so no “but I am a mommy” or “I have no time” excuses! And while you are headed towards a better, more magnificent you, you can lead by example — showing your children healthy habits to help them make better lifestyle choices.

Here are the top tricks to get the waistline of your dreams without ever going to the gym! Check ‘em out:

1. Before you go to sleep at night, set a glass of water on your nightstand with a spoon. In the morning when you wake up, give the spoon a stir a couple times to activate the water and reenergize it. Drink up to wake your body up and kick start it into motion!

2. Start your day with a veggie/juice combination. Try carrots, apple, beets, spinach and ginger. Blend it or juice it. I promise you will feel a boost of energy and you will soon forget all about the breakfast feast you used to make for the family. The kiddos will love it!

3. Eat like a toddler and snack all day. Snack when your tot does — and eat the same portion size. Trust me, you won’t get hungry because you’ll be eating all day. Your metabolism will start to work faster because it has energy all day to burn.

4. Remind yourself EVERY TIME you pass a mirror to stand tall, shoulders back and down. This will give your body a chance to use muscles you might have forgotten about since being pregnant, nursing, and carrying a toddler became part of your daily routine. And without realizing it you will be giving your stomach muscles a workout too! Bonus!

5. Think positive EVERY TIME you think about your extra cushion. It has been said too many times now; Think wellness, be well. Uplift your thoughts.

6. Stop squeezing into clothes that hug you in the wrong spot. For instance, leave the low-waisted pants to your teen. Shop for styles that fit and flatter you. You are a woman, so celebrate that with a mid or high-waisted pant. Show off those curves! You’ve earned them! And you worked hard for them! Once you embrace your shape, you will look and feel unstoppable.

7. Get yourself a new bra! And while you are at it, go get properly fit for a bra! Most women from an early age have misconceived impressions of what size they actually are. Try Victoria’s Secret or Nordstrom’s. The staff is very highly qualified and know how to deliver the news without making you feel traumatized over the idea that you are actually a size or two larger than you have been shopping for the last couple years!

8. Take a bread break. Don’t eat any bread for 7 days. See how different you feel. Notice your pants fitting a little looser? Pay attention to how much you use bread when you could use other things to hold a dish together like lettuce or eggplant, or nothing at all. I love using a leaf of collard greens instead of a hamburger bun for my burgers. It holds up well and is just as satisfying!

What are your tips for staying in shape?

Plus, more from The Bump:

10 Things to Do for You in 10 Minutes

Lose the Baby Weight — Without Really Trying

What Your Body Will (Really!) Look Like After Baby

Last night, after my workout, I forgot to put a shirt on.

For four hours, I walked around our home wearing a Target nursing bra and GAP Body short shorts. I cooked dinner that way, I talked to my friend Amanda for 45 minutes on the phone that way, I watched Californication with my husband that way and I brushed my teeth, swallowed my vitamins and hit the sack that way.

This is a relatively new phenomenon for me. Sure, there have been questionable stretches of time where I showed lots of skin: My freshman year of college, when I ran around my dorm wearing tee shirts barely long enough to cover my butt; my early 20s, when I danced until 4 a.m. in cages at clubs clad in what could barely be described as scraps of fabric; years at the gym where I worked out in just sports bras and bike shorts. But all of those phases occurred during periods of disordered eating or horrible body image issues. I suspect I was acting out in some way, revealing skin in an effort to trick people into thinking I was comfortable with, or even proud of, my figure, at times when I truly was not.

Then I got better and left the ED bullshit behind. I stopped stepping on the scale and forgot to look at the “Calories Burned” readout on the elliptical machine and no longer ordered dishes at restaurants When Harry Met Sally-style .(“I’ll begin with a house salad, but I don’t want the regular dressing. I’ll have the balsamic vinegar and oil, but on the side. And then the salmon with the mustard sauce, but I want the mustard sauce. On the side.”)I was content with my body — not in an over-the-moon, submit-my-pics-to-Playboy kind of way, but I learned to focus on what my body allowed me to do and began to appreciate its strength, its height, its power. During this period of recovery, I dressed more appropriately; I was never mistaken for an Amish woodworker, mind you, but I wasn’t exactly frolicking around the pool in a thong.

Then I had a baby, and everything changed — in a way for which I was totally unprepared. Today, I love my body. Not just in a “Today is October 17^th, it’s National Love Your Body Day!” sort of a way. It’s in an, “I want to run around naked because I am obsessed with my boobs and hey, the rest of me looks pretty damn good, too” sort of way. Not only was I not plagued by stretch marks or significant weight gain while carrying Evie, but breastfeeding had some sort of bizarre affect on my metabolism, to the point where I regularly snack on cups of buttercream frosting and order dishes like short ribs and fried calamari when dining out, and it just sort of burns off. Up top, my small-B chest has swollen to a nice C-cup, which I feel perfectly balances out my five-eleven-ness. Last week, during a baby-free Cancun weekend getaway with Dan, I found myself purposefully leaving my cover-up* in our hotel room and not only parading around the pool in my new Victoria’s Secret (Size Large!) bikini top and string bottoms, but attempting to dine at the indoor buffet in non-omelet bar-friendly attire. For the first time in my life, I am truly singing, “I love my body.” And I don’t want to feel ashamed or egotistical for doing so, because I’ve wasted far too many years screaming just the opposite at myself.

But here’s the rub: This body that I love, it’s a false body. As soon as I stop breastfeeding, the boobs will surely deflate and my teenage boy metabolism will probably screech to a halt. No more mid-afternoon noshes of whole jumbo avocados mashed up with garlic salt and slathered on Stacey’s pita chips; no more Dairy Queen runs for extra cookie dough. No more size 27 jeans. No more Victoria’s Secret Size Large bikini tops.

What I hopehopehope happens is that, come weaning time, my enhanced outlook stays with me even as my physique resettles into its old comfort zone. That I still feel comfortable walking around the pool sans cover-up and I don’t feel compelled to revert to ordering side salads squirted with lemon juice. I do believe that simply the act of being a mom to a little girl will have its own protective effects on my body image; she’s already taught me so much about adoring what I see when I look in the mirror.

And maybe – just maybe – one of the reasons I love this amplified chest so much is because of what it represents: That I am growing and nurturing our child.  To her, they offer sustenance and comfort. I wonder if perhaps that knowledge is subconsciously coloring my perspective: When I see “36 C” on my bra label, I interpret it as “Size: Nourishing.”**

But for now, as I move towards my goal of nursing for one year, I’m going to keep “forgetting” to get dressed and shovel in as many slices of deep dish as I can. Because the truth is, I’ve taken another page from the When Harry Met Sally playbook: After years of hating it, my thoughts about my bod are now of the “Oh…Oh God…Oh, ohh…Yes, Yes, YES!” variety. And damn, it feels good.

How has your body image changed postbaby?

*But what a cute cover-up it is!

**Please note, this is not me saying that moms who feed their babies formula are in any way less than. Nor am I saying a woman needs big breasts to breastfeed, because she doesn’t.

You’ve heard the terms: sympathy weight, fatherhood fifteen, paternity pounds, dad dough, child chunk (okay, I made that last one up). Whatever you call it, no cute little turn of phrase, play on words or awesome alliteration makes it more acceptable that most new dads pack on weight after they have kids. And you don’t need a psych degree to figure out why this happens.

Between the cravings you end up sharing during pregnancy (for my better half, it was Italian food, Swedish fish and ice cream), the stress, the lack of sleep and the lack of time to exercise after baby arrives, it’s no wonder some guys develop man boobs faster than their wives develop nursing boobs. The question is: As a dad, what are you going to do to stop this from happening to you? (And if you’re a woman reading this, what are you going to do to help your husband?)

For me, this wasn’t an easy question. As someone who has made a career out of writing for magazines like Men’s Fitness and Men’s Health, I’d always taken my workout time for granted. I lifted weights regularly, played basketball a few times a week, swam on a Master’s team, and more. I was probably naive to think that I’d be able to maintain even half of my activities after the arrival of my first daughter, but when it turned out that during the first month or so of being a dad, I was maintaining exactly zero of them, it was a shock to my system. Couple that with the fact that I had the sleeping hours of a first-year med student and I was eating fast food like I was back in college. I was in trouble.

I hit this point about three weeks after the birth of my daughter and that’s when I decided I needed to come up with a plan to somehow squeeze exercise into my new dad life. I needed to get my blood moving so I didn’t feel tired and weak all the time. In order to do this and have any success with it, my plan had to meet these criteria:

1)      It had to fit into my existing schedule.

2)      No equipment would be required.

3)      I would have to be able to get other things done simultaneously.

4)      I’d have to burn calories or build muscle and not burn any time.

5)      The exercises had to be simple and effective.

After examining my schedule, taking stock of my daily activities and poring over a bunch of the fitness articles (ones I’d written!), I developed a plan that worked for me, and that I think every guy can follow to stay in shape. It’s not P90X. It’s not the Insanity workout. It won’t rebuild your body. It is simply a common-sense fitness plan to help you bridge the gap between your “I’m in great shape and about to have a kid” days and your “my kid sleeps all night and I sort of have my life back” days. Ideally, this will help you avoid the “I haven’t worked out or slept in three months, I eat like crap and I’ve gained 15 pounds” days.

The exercises and workouts I came up with are practical and they work. For instance, when you burp your baby, don’t just sit on the couch, do some Burp Lunges across your family room. They’re slow, great for your lower body and core, and they might even help induce the belch you’ve been praying for the last 10 minutes. Or next time you have your child in your Baby Bjorn, do a set of 10-15 body squats as soon as you strap her in. Making these kinds of things habits will turn everyday activities into calorie burners and muscle builders.

I wrote about these ideas and literally dozens more (along with lots of advice) in a book called The Dadvantage: Stay in Shape on No Sleep, with No Time and No Equipment. The book debuted this week in the Top 10 of Amazon’s ‘Fatherhood’ section and it has been climbing every day. No hard sell here. Just thought it might help some other dads out there. If you want to give it a shot (it’s short, meant to be read in one or two sittings) check it out.

Good luck!

You might want to take it a little easier at the gym if you’re trying to get pregnant. We’ve covered how exercise affects fertility before, but now a new study published in Fertility and Sterility provides further proof that moderate exercise is good for fertility, but over-exercising may slow down the baby-making process.

In the study, researchers looked at 3,500 Danish women over the span of a year, according to Reuters. These women were between the ages of 18 and 40, were actively trying to get pregnant and weren’t receiving fertility treatments. The women were asked how many hours a week they worked out and also what their exercise routine involved. About 70 percent of the women became pregnant during the study and researchers found that moderate exercise helped most of them get pregnant faster — those who spent five hours a week doing moderate exercise were 18 percent more likely to become pregnant than women who exercised fewer hours a week. And for the women who had a strenuous exercise routine, they were 32 percent less likely to have gotten pregnant in that time period. Weight and body mass index were not a factor in these findings.

The researchers admit that they need to do more research since the women self-reported their exercise routines, and could have misjudged the intensity of their workouts. It’s still uncertain why strenuous exercise may affect a woman’s chance of getting pregnant, although some theories are that the lack of body fat can cause women to have irregular periods and that exercise may affect how the egg implants in a woman’s uterus.

How often do you exercise? If you’re trying to get pregnant, have you modified your fitness routine?