“It does me good and I feel it’s good for the baby too,” says Camille, a young woman who is five and a half months pregnant. In full physical exercise in the basin of one of the Strasbourg swimming pools, the future mother, who was “not particularly used to playing sports” before her pregnancy, seized the opportunity when her gynecologist offered to benefit from a new component of the Sport Health prescription scheme. An eleven-year-old system originated by the European capital.
This Friday, Camille participates, for forty-five minutes in a group lesson, but in small numbers, exclusively reserved for pregnant women and young mothers, a new part of the “Health Sport” system. Beside her, Fatima, six months pregnant. She is just as happy and “not concerned at all” as suggested by her doctor. If, unlike Camille, she still practiced different sports a few months ago, she immediately saw the opportunity, with these adapted activities, to “take care of herself and the baby” and to maintain her shape. for childbirth. This Friday was her first class, but she assures her, she will “continue to the end and even after”.
Adapted and supervised activities
The opportunity above all to motivate yourself, to get into or get back into sport, with swimming activities adapted and supervised by professionals, or even yoga or prenatal gymnastics. A remedy to “fight against a sedentary lifestyle and its procession of chronic diseases”, underlines Doctor Alexandre Feltz, elected deputy mayor but also a doctor by profession, at the origin of the Sport health network on prescription present in many French cities. A device that allows, to put it simply, a health professional to prescribe physical activity, free, as “medicine”. If, eleven years ago, this was intended to help fight against various pathologies such as obesity, diabetes, the device has, over the years, extended to the greatest number. Because the primary objective is “to prevent and show the benefits of regular physical and sports practice” for the entire population, explains Alexandre Feltz.
The benefits of an adapted activity
For just one year, this system has therefore been extended, in Strasbourg, to pregnant women and young mothers. Because “the benefits in terms of public health and improvement of quality of life, as for all, but especially during maternity, are numerous”, recalls the doctor reinforced by data from the Ministry of Sports. It lists: participation in controlling weight gain, reducing lower back pain, improving venous circulation, protecting the perineum, preventing intestinal transit disorders, facilitating mobility, reducing anxiety and the state of depression that could be felt, especially after pregnancy, etc.
In Strasbourg, the birth of this new initiative made possible in particular by the significant financial participation of the Impact 24 Endowment Fund of the Paris Olympics, or even the Departmental Youth Service, was painless. More than a hundred women are already benefiting from it and the requests are multiplying. This new membership should make small even if this proposal still suffers from not being sufficiently known by the general public and the actors of the perinatal, notes the Maison Sport santé of Strasbourg. Pregnancy “is a special moment in life during which, somewhat intuitively, women tend to reduce their physical activity whereas, on the contrary, insists Alexandre Feltz, if it is well adapted to this moment in life, it is very favorable to their state of health. »