I am writing this review as an active Every Mother user for the past three years. I had two babies 15 months apart, and now my youngest is 15 months old. So, I have had a lot of experience with the ever-changing pregnancy/postpartum body these past few years! As I was an active person before getting pregnant, I wanted to maintain that while pregnant but had the constant fear of doing something bad for the baby or something that would harm by body. My doctor finally recommended the Every Mother workout program to try and now, over three years later, I am still hooked! Below is my review of the Every Mother workout program, as I hope it can be as useful for you as it has been for me!
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Table of Contents
What is the Every Mother Workout Program?
The Every Mother workout program is a pregnancy-safe workout program that follows you through the pregnancy and postpartum journey, and helps to prevent/minimize Diastasis recti (ab separation) during pregnancy and to bring your abs back together postpartum. This program was initially recommended to me by my OB-GYN, and is backed by scientific studies that they have linked on their website. (Of course, if you have any questions or concerns, you should always check with your doctor before starting the workout program.)
What is Diastasis Recti and Why Should You be Worried About it?
Diastasis recti refers to the separation of your abdominal muscles. When you picture your two rows of abs that move down your stomach, it is essentially when they separate during pregnancy, but can also occur through bad form, posture, exercise, etc. (You can see a better visual of it HERE). Whenever people would tell me I was crazy for worrying about this happening during pregnancy, I would always tell them to “Google” it because it really does occur and can be pretty traumatic at times. If you are a member of the Every Mother workout program, there are multiple women in the village (accessible through their app) that share their progress from having extreme ab separation to coming back from it using this workout program.
Diastasis recti (or ab separation) is naturally occurring during pregnancy and is classified once there is a two-finger separation or greater between the ab muscles. The point of participating in this workout program is to help minimize/prevent the occurrence of ab separation during pregnancy and then postpartum, to help bring the ab muscles back together. When you monitor your separation during the workout program, there are three separate areas that are checked: right at your belly button, ~3 inches above and ~3 inches below. This is something you should worry about because the more you prevent it from happening, the less work you will have to do after the fact. Also, the greater the occurrence of ab separation, the more issues you will have as a result (e.g., incontinence, back pain, etc.). You can read more about this topic on the Every Mother website, where they have a post written by an OB-GYN on this topic.
How Does the Every Mother Workout Program Work?
The great part about this workout program is that it meets you where you are. You are in your second trimester? Great! You will get workouts catered to women in their second trimester. Or, you just had your baby a week ago? Great! The program will be catered to helping you heal after baby, without pushing you. (Don’t worry, they just give you breathing exercises (core compressions) to do a week postpartum!)
There are two parts to the daily workouts that are provided for you: there are the core compressions (breathing exercises) and then the actual workout portion. Each day during pregnancy, you will be given both (with some random days having the actual workout portion be to talk a walk outside). The only time you are only given the core compressions is when you are freshly postpartum, easing back into exercising and they only have you do breathing exercises each day. However, that slowly eases into stretching exercises, and so on. Regardless of where you are at, there are also exercise videos that are available to you in what is essentially a workout library to select and play at any time, regardless of what exercise you are given that day.
For example, here is what exercises I was given when I was 20 days postpartum. My body was still in complete recovery mode and my workout consisted of 11 minutes of core compressions and a walk (see the example on the left). However, if I want a greater challenge, I can always click on the “workouts” tab (picture on the right) and do an additional workout video there.
Meanwhile, this was my workout set for today at 15 months postpartum. At this point, there are different “paths” that you can choose and then you follow that path for ~20 days or so and then switch to another path.
Another thing that is great to note is that the core compression exercises do not exceed 11 minutes per video (with the longest being during pregnancy), although they do get down to around 2 minutes during your regular workouts you reach after the postpartum recovery program. And then with the actual exercise videos, they never exceed 30 minutes, so it is a really efficient use of your time.
How to Access the Every Mother Workouts?
There are two easy ways to access the workout program: online or through an app on your phone. During my first pregnancy, I mainly used my computer just because it was convenient with how our house was set up. But during my second pregnancy, I exclusively used the app, which was pretty exciting for my first baby to help me with! You get the same information and resources in both places, so it is really just up to you based on your personal preferences. Also, after completing each portion of your daily workout, it automatically gets checked off. That check off can be found updated in both places as well.
Pros and Cons of the Every Mother Workout Program
Pros
- You can do this workout in the comfort of your home (but since you can access it on the app, you can also do it in the gym or anywhere of your choosing)
- Minimal equipment is needed and if you do not have any equipment, you can use items found around your house (e.g., water bottles or soup cans to substitute for hand weights)
- You can pause and come back to this workout (it will pick up where you left off), which is especially important if you are a parent to small children!
- The price for this program and to be given a personalized workout for whatever stage you are at in life is ridiculous! If you purchase an annual pass to this program, it comes out to around $10/month. You cannot get anything fitness related for that cheap, and especially not when you think about the cost of a monthly gym pass or the cost for a personal trainer. (Even the other fitness accounts I follow on social media do not offer anything that inexpensive.)
- All of the workouts and activities provided within them are safe for your body. They help prevent ab separation while pregnant, bring your abs back together after giving birth and help maintain your body in a healthy state postpartum (and also pre-pregnancy). There is nothing better than knowing that you are being given instructions on how to properly workout and to heal your body.
- This program was recommended by my doctor while I was pregnant and worked for me (without question). If you have any hesitations about it, I would recommend consulting your doctor before starting.
- Scientific studies have shown that this program works. (You can access those HERE.)
- There are really resourceful blog posts, newsletters and the Every Mother village (the village of mothers that participate in the Every Mother workout community) that go along with this program. In the support group, there is active participation by the founder (the woman who tells you what exercise to do and how to do it when you are watching the videos), as well as people who work directly with her.
- During my second pregnancy, I was very happy to have found new workout videos in my program that were from the viewpoint of a pregnant woman. During my first pregnancy, all of the videos were of the founder (a very slim, in-shape woman) doing workouts that were intended for people later in pregnancy. This was hard for me because I always questioned if I was doing the exercises properly (comparing a big pregnant belly to a flat one is hard to tell!), but during the second pregnancy, the founder had been pregnant in between and had filmed extra workout videos to add in. That was a great addition!
- It teaches you how to breathe properly and you can take that and apply it to other areas of your life, including different workout programs. This was really priceless for me, especially having two little ones under two that wanted to be carried and lifted up all the time. After learning the breathing techniques of this program, I was able to lift and carry correctly to prevent back pain.
- The price has not increased in the past three years that I have been using this program.
- Yoga videos are now included and are a great addition!
Cons
- You are listening to instruction from the same lady, day in and day out, and it can get a bit repetitive and redundant at times (this isn’t really an issue though). Since originally posting this review, there are now three additional instructors that have a small library of workouts included too, and each one specializes in a different area, such as yoga, HIIT, and legs.
- The actual workout videos can sometimes be too easy. However, you can always add ankle weights or increase the weights you are lifting to increase the difficulty of the workout. You can also switch the workout videos for that day or do an additional one that is offered in the workout library. The only time I have ever really experienced this was on days when they only have stretching videos. The pregnancy workouts seem basic at times, but they can get really challenging, and the postpartum workouts can be harder that anything I have ever done before!
My Personal Experience
My First Pregnancy
During my first pregnancy, I started using the Every Mother workout program around the 5-month mark. I had a really difficult first half of my pregnancy and was super sick the entire time with all-day morning sickness. However, once things settled down a bit, I was able to get into an exercise routine that consisted of daily walks, the Every Mother workout program and 2-4 yoga classes per week. I had a great delivery experience (the baby arrived within four hours of arriving at the hospital) and my body healed very quickly. I attributed this to both taking care of myself while pregnant, as well as attempting to eat as healthy as possible under the circumstances!
My Second Pregnancy
Everything was different during my second pregnancy. I had morning sickness, but it was not as bad (I was just tired all the time), and I also had an infant child that I was chasing around all day. I still went for daily walks and did the Every Mother workout program, but the yoga classes were once a week at most. During the second pregnancy, I was able to better enjoy and appreciate the Every Mother workout program because there were what seemed to be more pregnancy-specific workout videos (where the instructor was pregnant and leading the class with other pregnant women), and there were more resources to better understand how to properly care for my pregnant body (e.g., there was a blog post telling me all of the traditional yoga poses that were not good to do that could potentially lead to ab separation). Although I was worried about how my body would do during labor and recovery after having not been as rigid about specific exercise during my second pregnancy, I had a pretty similar delivery and recovery process compared to the first go-around.
Every Mother Before and After Pictures
I am hesitant to share these pictures from after having my second baby (my babies are 15 months apart, so my body had been through a lot!) because there are so many more factors that go into a woman’s ever-changing body after giving birth, besides a workout program. However, I will mention that I pumped until 7 months postpartum, put lots and lots of cream on my stomach morning and night (which you can also see thankfully healed up pretty well!), ate lots of fruits and vegetables, and although my “end product” body looks better in this picture than before I started having babies, it also has a lot stretchier stomach skin that is not that flat when I am sitting down. Please be gentle with your healing body and know that it will take time to recover, but slowly working at it, will help you get there! I will, however, mention that all of the tone is a direct result from the Every Mother workouts and how they taught me to breath and lift in my daily life, while not working out.
Conclusion
If you are pregnant, trying to get pregnant or any form of postpartum, I would 100% recommend this workout program. I have religiously done these workout programs for the last three years while pregnant, postpartum, back to regular workouts, and then repeat! My doctor recommended this program to me while I was pregnant with my first baby and I was so worried that I was going to harm the baby or my body while doing the wrong workouts while pregnant, and this entire program completely eased my mind and helped keep my body intact. I am so thankful for this program and cannot say enough great things about it!
If you would like to join the program, you can do so HERE. I would recommend signing up for the year plan, since it is the cheapest and I really believe that once you try it and get the hang of it, you will love it! However, if you just want to sign up and try it out for three months, they also have that option.
Are you ready to get started?! Click below to Join Now!
How to Sign Up
To access the Every Mother workout program, you can click HERE. This will take you to the Every Mother website. In the top righthand corner, you will see the option to “Join.” Click on that.
You are then given the option to sign up for a 3-month membership or an annual membership.
You click on the one that you want to sign up for and are prompted to create an account.
Once that is done, you can go in and select the workout program that suits you best for where you are right now (you can see from the example below that I am currently in the “Reclaim” stage).
It is never too early or too late to start! As you will frequently hear, once you are postpartum, you are always postpartum and it is never too late to heal your body after pregnancy!
Was there something I left out that you were hoping to learn while reading my review of the Every Mother workout program? If so, please leave your question below and I would be happy to answer it!
The emphasis on addressing postpartum concerns and diastasis recti is commendable, as it shows a genuine understanding of the physical changes that many mothers go through. The fact that this program is designed by moms, for moms, adds an authentic touch that instantly builds trust.