Climbing while pregnant & postpartum

So pregnancy, postpartum, and tree work. Since I’m all done having babies and now have all the firsthand experience with this topic that I’m going to have, I thought I’d write it up. This is first and foremost for the benefit of fellow arborists who may want to be gestational parents.

Before I get into it, some important disclaimers. First of all: I’m not a doctor and this is not medical advice. Please talk to your doctor and listen to your body.  Second of all: I want to be clear that on an industry level, nobody should be implicitly or explicitly coerced into climbing while pregnant. I think everyone should have the ability to either switch duties while pregnant or have paid pregnancy leave. However, there will always be people who freely choose to do some of this, and those are the people I’m writing for.

Some important context: the tree work I was doing while pregnant was either low-volume side work that I sold and had control over, or climbing trees in the context of academic research. I was working with a supportive friend in a commercial setting and student assistants in a research setting. Also, I did inventory arboriculture during my first pregnancy and didn’t climb, but the second time around when I had a better sense of my body and the whole pregnancy thing I actually climbed all the way until a few days before I gave birth.

Ok so tree work and pregnancy. Here are the things I was most concerned about and what I did to mitigate them:

Noise and fumes

After 10-12 or so weeks gestation I didn’t run a chipper or a gas saw. I have 12”, 16” and 20” electric saws and usually those were plenty; if not, someone else did the bucking. I did work on jobsites with both chippers and gas saws. I kept enough distance from them that I didn’t feel I had to wear hearing protection, and figured that was enough for the fetus as well. As I understand it, hearing damage has to do with both duration and noise level, so being in the vicinity of a chipper once a month or so didn’t concern me. When possible, I tried to sell work where a chipper wasn’t necessary at all, and we could just drag brush to the woods or whatever (which as I’ve mentioned before, I try to do anyway for ecological reasons).

Relaxin and diastasis recti

I was very aware of relaxin and the increased possibility of joint injury while pregnant. To mitigate this, I was extra aware of positioning while pregnant. I tried to climb excurrent trees where possible, and be extremely conservative with my rope angles and tie-in points, which also served to prevent any sort of dangerous swing. To decrease the possibility of having issues with diastasis recti after giving birth, I tried to maintain as vertical a position as possible for ascent. I used ascenders exclusively and avoided the kind of casual body-thrusting I would do when not pregnant. I didn't use spikes, do spar work, or serve as the climber for larger removals while pregnant.

The harness and lanyard configuration

I used a Petzl 8003 full-body harness from around 10-12 weeks gestation onward, to avoid any constriction around my torso. The most annoying thing was having to attach a lanyard and my climbing system in the same place, but once I got the hang of it it wasn’t terrible. I used carabiners with wire keepers to prevent gate-loading.

Postpartum

With both pregnancies I was very serious about literally staying in bed as much as possible for about three weeks after delivery. I think this helped tremendously with the overall speed of recovery following that period. Get a support team together and commit to it. I noticed a big difference in recovery depending on length of pushing stage in the birth, but there’s not much you can do to control that. With both births it was about 8 weeks before I was finding myself ready and wanting to climb again.

Breastfeeding and pumping

Both babies have been breastfed, the first exclusively, the second nearly exclusively. With my first, I went back to part-time tree work in the winter, so I would pump milk in my car and save it for her in an unrefrigerated cooler (because it was already very cold outside). With my second, it was the summer, so I would pump for comfort and to maintain milk supply while on the job but have my partner feed him formula for the hours I was gone so I didn’t have to worry about breastmilk storage or hygiene. Both times I've used a Spectra S9 pump and been extremely happy with the size and battery life. I thought about using a Ceres Chiller to store milk but I didn’t. With the first baby I pumped directly into breastmilk storage bags for hygiene.

Heat & lactation

This is actually the biggest safety issue I encountered through the whole journey. If you're lactating, you need EVEN MORE water and electrolytes than normal if it's hot, because your body will think that your baby is doing the same things you are, and dump all of those resources into your milk (not scientific), leaving you exposed to heat exhaustion or heat stroke. Be really careful working in the heat if you're lactating, and realize that you won't respond to heat the same way as if you're not.

There you go, that’s the quick & dirty rundown. Feel free to contact me with questions and once again, THIS IS NOT MEDICAL ADVICE AND NOBODY’S EMPLOYER SHOULD EVER EVER EVER FORCE THEM TO DO THIS. PAID PREGNANCY LEAVE FOR ALL.