Every day, I waddle out to get lunch from a place about a mile away from my apartment. In the spring, after I got vaccinated and the weather improved, I started taking outdoor fitness classes and walking as much as possible. In real life, I was bloated and couldn’t even fit into my sweatpants, but once I put the headset on, I became a dragon-slaying warrior goddess in faraway lands. In the cold, isolated, pre-vaccine days of last winter, making myself exercise required a literal departure from reality: I got my hands on an Oculus headset and hurled myself around my living room using a virtual-reality fitness program called Supernatural. Not only does it make you sleep better, but it also helps get higher oxygen delivery to the fetus.” ![]() “Everyone should exercise in pregnancy,” she told me. Taraneh Shirazian, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at NYU Langone Health, was even more emphatic. But as my doctor put it, “Whatever kind of activity you’re doing, do it as much as you can.” Dr. No pregnant person wants to hear that they should exercise more. Here’s my full, doctor-approved program no matter what stage of pregnancy you’re at (or even if you’re not pregnant), I hope you find something here that helps you. It’s a little obsessive, but every bit worth the eightish hours of rest I’ve been getting most nights. I’m now 37 weeks pregnant and still sleeping pretty well, as long as I stick to my finely calibrated routine. To my surprise and relief, it actually worked. She gave me some advice, which I followed with the religious fervor of the truly desperate. But was there anything else I could do or take? My trusty old friend Ambien was off-limits, I knew. I spent the witching hours of January lying on the cold kitchen floor, listening to meditation apps and dreading how exhausted I’d be the next day. When I dragged myself out of bed in the morning, my body felt toxic and heavy, like my veins were pumping lead. On New Year’s Eve, I conked out at 10:30 p.m., woke up at 1 a.m., tossed fitfully for what felt like years, and finally made myself a ham-and-cheese sandwich at 4 a.m. Things started to get bad around week 12. (This was backed up by another friend of mine who had twins.) I braced myself. ![]() I’d heard horror stories about insomnia during the third trimester in particular - that it’s “the worst sleep you’ll ever get in your life,” according to one friend, even compared to having a newborn. So when I got pregnant last fall, I was nervous. ![]() Photo: Youngoldman/Getty Images/iStockphoto
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