Maternity jogging clothes are not yet standard issue in most sports stores, but if more women copy one 36-year-old mother who continued her 6.4 km (4 mile) per day running program right up to the day before bearing her seventh child—and then walked the distance on the day of the birth—there may soon be a whole new line of designer togs on the market.
The mother, whose case was reported at the annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) in Bal Harbour, Fla, was one of a group of pregnant women being tested for aerobic fitness by a team from the Human Performance Research Laboratory and the College of Nursing's division of midwifery at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City.
Originally, the program included only pregnant women for whom swimming exercises were prescribed during their last trimester. The intent was to measure any physiological changes occurring