Parent Health & Fitness

Hey Bastion Readers,

The preparing for parenthood series will be an in depth guide to help you get ready for the monumental challenges ahead. We begin with a topic that plays a big role in your career development as well as starting a family — health and fitness!

Your everyday choices can help build a foundation for success when crushing those career goals and chasing little ones around all day. Everyone will find success with health along different pathways as we have different genetics and restrictions. There is not one straightforward answer for building health into your family life, but there are some good places to start. My journey was never about finding optimal health, but rather deleting some of the bad habits from my routine. Let me know what works best for you in the comments on social media. I am always curious to learn.

My experience for prioritizing parent health, fitness, and fertility started about 6 months before the decision to start a family. I decided to focus on nutrition in my diet, remove highly processed foods, and remove the intake of alcohol entirely. After sharing my intentions with my wife, it was clear this could be a partner goal we could work on together. It is important to have that accountability partner for diet as it is so easy to give into the simple temptations when at the grocery store or out to dinner. Try it out! See if working as a team can help build better habits into your diet which will boost you toward your family goals.

While there is a long list of contributing factors when it comes to peak fertility, making these intentional choices could really help in the process of preparing for children. Understanding environmental exposures to chemicals, the effect of consumption of plastics, and even lifestyle choices around sleep or exercise can play a big role. Are the chemical products you choose for hygiene and skin care playing a role? Are the cleaning products in the home harmful? Is your quick lunch or feeding that fast food craving diminishing your chances? There are plenty of influences in our daily lives to consider.

Here is a starting point if you want to build optimal health into your family life:

• Diet

• In the preparation stage, make sure to focus on nutrition! Eating a diet rich in whole foods, removing highly processed items, and limiting drug & alcohol intake can be powerful ways to support health.

• During the infant stage, maintaining a proper diet will be tough when adjusting to the daily routine of a newborn. Making large batch meals that can be stretched, leaning on family for support, and utilizing grocery delivery services can keep your pantry stocked with healthy foods.

• Creating healthy habits now will encourage growing children to favor nutrition over processed snack foods. Targeting weak points in your diet now will ensure you are healthy and strong to be present for family activities in the future.

• Sleep

• In the preparation stage, prioritize getting enough sleep while balancing career and life goals. A routine sleep schedule focused on a full night of rest can keep you energized through the planning stages. Preparing a nursery, hunting down supplies, and organizing for a baby is tough work! Success begins with your sleep routine.

• During the infant stage, there will be rough nights. Adapting your sleep schedule to meet the two hour feeding windows or comforting your newborn is not easy. The advice of “sleeping when the baby sleeps” is challenging — I get it, no one wants to sleep for an hour and a half at 4PM with a big list of to do’s before the baby wakes up again. In my experience, we were able to sleep in shifts to work as a team. It will not work for everyone with varied schedules, but the recent work from home capabilities are a huge bonus for this period. Remember to stay calm when things get tough and you are sleep deprived. It will be physically and mentally taxing, but finding a sleep schedule that balances responsibilities can keep you energized enough to forge on during this time.

• Return to healthy sleep habits after the baby begins sleeping through the night. Creating a rigid sleep schedule can help a baby establish a great bedtime routine. Restoring a normal sleep routine for parents can let you catch up and smooth the transition when returning to career responsibilities.

• Activity

• In the preparation stage, make strides to build strength through routine exercise. Getting in shape now can help prepare you for the years of physical activity required to support healthy activities for children. Repetitive movements, lifting a child, and prolonged muscle use are all required when caring for babies.

• During the infant stage, remember to stretch and stay active. Rocking a baby, holding a weight for a long duration, and even certain motions can cause huge physical stress. You might get sore as your little one chooses a comfortable position that may be awkward for you to support. You might even discover sore muscles in spots you were unaware of before having kids! The weight distribution of a small human is far different from the stable design of a box. Supporting muscle recovery and even training to build core or back muscles can be a huge help when balancing rocking a new baby for 30 minutes.

• Keep activity levels high throughout the years you are raising children. Being present as a parent almost requires that you retain your physical strength while aging. As my children get involved in sports, travel, and their adult lives — I hope to be in great physical shape to be a part of their journey. Setting the foundation early will be a great investment as the years fly by.

I hope you find these tips valuable as you start to prepare for a growing family. Find the little tweaks in your diet, nutrition, and activity schedule that can promote health in the preparation stage.

Thank you so much for tuning in and follow us on our socials if you find these posts helpful!

- P.F.