My name is Kelly Miethe and I am prenatal + postpartum fitness specialist. What does that mean? I’m trained to help mamas with exercise during pregnancy and beyond with appropriate movements for your current stage of pregnancy or motherhood.
The reason I’ve decided to dedicate a career to doing so is because there are so many things I wish I would have known during my journey of my first pregnancy and postpartum experience.
I was so hell bent on staying in shape during pregnancy number one, and I wouldn’t listen to anything that I read. I just felt “above” it with all of my knowledge and experience. I even ran a half marathon a few days before I was pregnant and somehow thought this was going to give me a leg-up to the inevitable reality of what pregnancy does to the body. I will be honest, pregnancy, was HARD for me. Not because I felt sick or anything but because I did not expect my body to change that much. Not totally sure where this belief came from, but I found the process stressful and I worried a lot about what would happen to me postpartum. Would I gain a ton of weight? Would I get stretch marks? Would I bounce back? Who will I become?
I’m still working on that last one…
But to circle back to the “why” behind what I do…I do it because I didn’t really have anyone with the answers, guidance or support. And I don’t say that in a negative way, as if my mom, best friends and doctors weren’t absolutely amazing and supportive. I say that in the way of I had so many fears, a lot of them I was afraid to say out loud and I addressed them the best way I knew how and it really ended up working TOTALLY AGAINST ME.
I wasn’t aware of the proper movements that I could and should be doing with a growing belly, I didn’t realize that I could be harming major organs and muscle systems by running when I was feeling so much pressure in my pelvic region. I didn’t know that pushing myself would actually hurt me in the long-term…well until I did.
It was about 10 days postpartum, my mom had JUST left, literally the day before. I woke up for another glorious early morning feeding and I could barely walk, I thought, this is weird? As I took a few more steps the pain radiated so badly that I couldn’t really move around. I managed to get the feeding done and laid back down and thought nothing of it. A day or so went by and my husband was back to work, because of the pain we had to re-organize the house and schedule because I couldn’t carry my newborn down the stairs, so we sort of just managed with me not having to walk up the stairs the entire day.
I couldn’t really get up and down from the couch and anything weight bearing was absolutely painful. My OB didn’t know what was wrong, a chiropractor tried to help but made it worse, and eventually my mom came to the rescue to help because I couldn’t take care of my baby on my own (cue major MOM GUILT).
A few weeks later, I found a Postpartum Physical Therapist who saved me. I will never forget her. What had happened was that my pelvis had completely shifted during pregnancy, and the muscles and ligaments surrounding it were so weak that they weren’t able to hold it in place. So every time I walked or bore any weight, the pelvis wasn’t aligned and would essentially rub against itself and cause tremendous pain. This FORCED me to slow down and welcome about 4 months of 3x a week PT to fix.
Okay, so that was done. But guess what, since the entire body is so amazingly connected, guess what else was totally screwed up…my core. We discovered that along with back issues (very common) I had a 4-finger separation in between my midline, aka, the linea alba. This is also called Diastasis Recti. So that was another journey in PT to address healing those deep core layers and bring them back together. Which I did! But it was a ton of stepping back from what I had always thought was proper exercise, patience, breath work and more patience. Through this 13+ month process, I learned so much, researched like crazy and knew I had to advocate for other women.
There HAS to be other women out there who have had this experience or maybe are experiencing it now and have no idea what’s going on.
So I became certified as a Prenatal + Postpartum Exercise Specialist as well as Postpartum Corrective Exercise Specialist (helping the PP population correct their movements/ exercise to heal the body). It’s amazing because we can’t always prevent everything, but there are SO many ways in which we can work with our bodies during pregnancy and postpartum instead of fight against them. We can actually make our core stronger during pregnancy and have reduce the chances of a separation. We can also move in ways that are functional + reduce back pain rather than fight through exercises that aren’t beneficial for our stage of motherhood.
My number one goal is to help mamas feel happy, healthy, confident + strong throughout every stage of motherhood. I provide Group Fitness Classes (coming back soon!), Customized Private Training Sessions, in-person or virtually, Trimester Specific Recipe + Nutrition Guide + Accountability!
So enough about me, I’d love to get to know you! Please send me a message, follow me on IG or just say hello 🙂 If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out.