Looking after your MSK health in the early months of parenthood
Nicola Tik
The early months of parenthood are physically demanding in ways that can creep up on you. This article covers some straightforward strategies to help you look after your muscles and joints during this period, so you can keep moving and recover well alongside everything else that is going on.
Structured exercise may not be realistic right now, and that is completely fine. What tends to help most in this period is keeping the body gently moving throughout the day rather than looking for a dedicated workout window that may never arrive.
Short bursts of movement, even a few minutes of walking, some shoulder rolls, or gentle stretching between tasks, can help reduce the stiffness that builds up from repetitive positions. If you notice your body feels particularly tight in one area after certain activities, that is useful information. It is your body's way of telling you where it is working hardest.
If you have a few minutes, VIDA has short videos you can follow at your own pace, whenever it suits you.
Lifting and carrying a baby involves a lot of repetition. Over a full day, those repetitions add up, and the muscles of the back, shoulders, and arms absorb the cumulative effect.
A few things that can help. Where you can, bring your baby close to your body when lifting rather than reaching out with arms extended. Alternate the side you carry on when it is practical to do so. When you are putting a baby down into a cot or pram, try to lower yourself with your legs rather than rounding forward through the upper back each time. None of this needs to be perfect. Small adjustments made consistently tend to make more difference than a single correct technique applied once.
Rest is not the absence of doing something useful. For your musculoskeletal system, it is an active part of how the body recovers and adapts. During periods of disrupted sleep and high physical demand, building in short moments of genuine rest, where you are not holding, lifting, or attending to something, gives your muscles a chance to recover.
This does not have to mean lying down. Sitting without holding tension in your shoulders, putting your feet up for a few minutes, or simply changing position can all count. The goal is to interrupt the pattern of sustained load rather than to achieve a specific amount of rest time.
Body awareness sounds like a vague concept, but in practice it is quite simple. It means noticing which activities tend to leave you feeling more uncomfortable, which positions build up tension over time, and which small changes seem to help.
Many people find that keeping a loose mental note of this, rather than pushing through without paying attention, helps them make small adjustments before discomfort builds into something harder to manage. You do not need to track anything formally. Just noticing is enough to start making useful changes.
The strategies in this article are not about adding more to an already full period of life. They are about making small, sustainable adjustments to the things you are already doing. Your body is working hard right now. Supporting it does not need to be complicated.
If you would like to keep track of how your body is feeling over time, your VIDA pain check-in is a simple way to notice patterns and see how things shift from week to week.