Dancing Kathak during pregnancy

Many passionate female dancer comes to a point, where family planning decisions has to be made.

The biological clock is ticking.

Dancing is not my main profession, but my life time passion. Besides that, a mother of 2 yrs toddler, wife, and of course my main job as a biotechnology engineer in a pharmaceutical company in Switzerland.

We, as family always wanted 2 kids.
My thoughts:
I don’t belong to the youngest. The year 2017 has been great to me in terms of dancing. Concerts, exams, teaching, meeting great souls of art lovers.. all this suddenly made me feel uncomfortable to make the decision.
Is this the right time to be pregnant???
I would be off dance floor for 9 months + another at least 3 (natural birth) to 6 (c-section) months for recovery and obviously the additional black box: How will I be coping with the responsibility of a 4th family member? How will she or he be as baby? Relaxed or demanding?

Now guess what, I am pregnant at 22 weeks. I am going to my gynecologist for regular check ups and I always ask for advice, if it’s still OK to dance. So far, my overall health condition is good and he allows or adviced me to carry on dancing.
His advice was basically, as long as I feel good while dancing, I should continue. He suggested avoiding strenuous exercises, jumps and any exercise which may cause any pain or fall.

This means for me while doing Kathak:
I will develop and keep my stamina with footwork practices (which is like an aerobic exercise).
Then I will not practice too many spins or at least carefully.
I will pay more attention to torso movements, less prounced, since the belly is becoming bigger.

And my motto: Health comes first.
This already makes me feel well trained which is not only good for your dance practice, but also very good to be trained for giving birth!!!
And the most beautifil benefit: If you are happy, your unborn baby is happy as well. With approximately 20 weeks, your unborn baby can hear and will feel the rhythm. Your happiness means release of complex set of stimulating hormones, from which your unborn baby will benefit as well!

My advice to you:
Your health and that of your unborn child comes first!!! Always take your gynocologist’s advice.
Never over do!
Eat balanced and healthy food and drink at least 2 liters of water.

My biggest inspiration is my Guru, Surangama Lala Dasgupta who is a mother of 2 grown up beautiful souls, among all her other commitments, duties, counselling work as a psychologist and of course Kathak teacher, choreographer and dancer. More to that in my next post!

Now what do you think?
Are you worried about your dance career or passion?
Did you stop dancing while pregnancy and/or after giving birth?

Drop a message in the comment section below!