Cold Water Swimming in Pregnancy

[mellisamouse]

Hey! Me and my partner are on our first cycle of TTC. I go sea dipping in the UK once a week where the temp is currently 8-9 degrees Celsius. I usually go shoulders under for around 3 mins. Does anyone have any experience cold water swimming during pregnancy? Should I keep doing this when TTC? TIA!

 

[dp1986]

@mellisamouse No experience, and it should probably be fine as long as you are TTC, but note that you’ll have to stop when you get pregnant as you want to keep your body temperature fairly stable (no hot tubs either).

 

[untunhud]

@mellisamouse I'm usually a regular river swimmer, but stopped when I started TTC because I couldn't find any concrete information about cold swimming in pregnancy either way. I miss it A LOT.

 

[chrisleatherman40]

@mellisamouse I think a 3 min cold swim is fine the whole way along personally. My husband does 3 min cold dips weekly here in Canada and I sometimes join him, but I found that during pregnancy it didn’t sound appealing. I did do the polar bear dip when I was in my third tri and it was a quick in and out! But I know what 3 mins in the ocean in winter feels like and I really don’t think it would hurt your baby. They are very well insulated in there. Fwiw I also don’t shy away from saunas in pregnancy, and kept using our home wood fired sauna the whole time. I would just do much shorter stints and not let myself get light headed or overly sweaty. As long as you aren’t changing your core temp it isn’t going to affect the baby.

 

[sara716]

@mellisamouse Cold water can cause reduced blood flow to the uterus which is why ice plunging isn't recommended during pregnancy. It's a small risk but a risk nonetheless.

 

[crystalturquoise]

@mellisamouse I swam in pretty cold pools (not that cold, but it’s a quick plunge) through half of my pregnancy (our pool is crazy deep and never gets warm so it goes from frigid to cool and back to frigid during the CT summer). I swam in cold May ocean too. Temperature ttc is more important for your partner since heat can mess with the semen. Not sure about cold for them. Your baby is super well insulated when you get pregnant and before then your eggs are even more insulated. Balls aren’t deep inside the body so I think that’s why for ttc temperature seems to matter. However, they make new little guys all the time so it’s not a huge issue at all to be cold or hot once a week.

Heat is really only a worry very early, so I’d avoid super hot baths and hot tubs once you test positive or even after your fertile window and before a period/positive. The neural tubes close very early in pregnancy (like before 6 weeks) and then you can worry less (though pregnancy makes you more prone to heat exhaustion and dehydration). They warn off heat a lot but if you’re not overdoing it, it’s actually fine after that very brief few weeks in the beginning. Annoying that so many pregnancy recommendations are so overly cautious because it’s easier to say “never” than list a bunch of conditions for when things are fine.

 

[mellisamouse]

@crystalturquoise Hi, thank you for your message ! Did you go in the cold pools during you first or second half ? How often did you go swimming?

 

[crystalturquoise]

@mellisamouse Second trimester into third. I really wouldn’t think twice about the cold swims while ttc. If you want to be super cautious you could ask your doctor after a positive what is recommended. Mine knew I was swimming in all kinds of cold water and didn’t have an issue with it.