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Taking Baby to Barre Class
Getting a workout with a two-month-old in tow
“Yes, you have to take it easy with your core after birth. But your arms are fine!” our instructor chides. “Get that elbow up!”
The Barre class instructor is a professional dancer, and his class is ballet-tough. The room full of mothers he’s teaching runs the gamut, from six weeks postpartum to nine months or more. At the head of each mat lays a baby, wiggling, sucking on a toy, passed out, or staring around.
One starts to fuss, and the instructor walks over.
“May I?” He gestures to the baby, a tiny dark-haired creature with a bow wrapped around her head.
When the mother consents, he scoops up the child and comforts her, leaving her mother free to complete the set of resistance band lunges. He holds the little girl in his arms as he demonstrates the next set of exercises.
My legs burn as we do a sequence of plie squats on tiptoe.
It’s nice to be challenged. Both online and in person, workouts branded “prenatal” or “postnatal” are often unsatisfying. Yes, the body has limitations, but if it’s all deep breathing and gentle stretching, I’m not getting what I came for.
I was too precious with my condition in the first trimester. I didn’t start to feel better until I began to work out again: from hauling rocks around the beach in Alaska to the no-excuses dumbbell videos of Nourish Move Love: a mom working out over the course of her own pregnancy on YouTube.
I’m careful not to fall into that trap again postpartum. Even in the hospital, I was doing squats and leg lifts.
I got back into physical therapy by four weeks postpartum, so I’ve had help sorting out my split-apart abs and destroyed pelvic floor. There’s a careful balance between too much, too soon, and unnecessary time spent as an invalid. Left to my own devices, I’m liable to push too hard, so I seek out sources designed for this phase.
Nourish Move Love also has a postpartum video series, and it’s great — when I can get to the weight sets in the gym. But the weights area doesn’t allow entry under sixteen years of age, so unless I can leave the baby, that’s out.
