Bring your baby
By Tricia Jones, The Columbian Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Two-year-old Simone Monigan looks up from her sippy cup and twists in her stroller. She's suddenly realized her mother is not within sight, and she's on the verge of turning fretful.
Vancouver's Anne Hill has just reached for a jump rope and points to one of three women jogging toward Simone. "Mama's over there, see her?" Hill asks, making sure Simone recognizes Sharese Monigan. Simone bobs and squeals as Hill begins chanting to the rhythm of her skipping rope: "Go, Mama, go! Go, Mama, go!"
Hill and Monigan were two of 10 mamas on the go that day in a Baby Boot Camp class. The international program has a Vancouver- based franchise and offers fitness sessions for moms who want to get in shape and bring their babies along. Strollers are incorporated into the workouts that include strength training as well as cardiovascular exercise, and sometimes yoga.
In addition to getting new moms toned, Baby Boot Camp offers tips on healthy eating, a choice of indoor or outdoor exercise and what certified personal trainer Cindy Keil calls "mom camaraderie."
Keil urged her nine charges along on a recent Tuesday morning in and outside the Firstenburg Community Center. The group did warmups in the center parking lot, pushed strollers up the sidewalk to the Haagen Community Park and stopped at various locations in and near the park for squats, bicep curls, tricep dips, leg extensions and bouts with elastic stretch bands.
Hill said she figures her son and his stroller together weigh about 30 pounds, so pushing them up the slope at a jog boosts the heart rate.
Keil shouted encouragement as she broke mothers into small workout groups, demonstrated moves and retrieved toddler-tossed footwear.
First, however, she asked each mom what body part she hoped to focus on in the day's group. Answers ranged from upper arms on the brink of tank top weather, to stomachs beset by too many brownies, to thighs, for which no further explanation was needed. Keil said she tries to focus on workouts for cardio health and the major muscle groups during each session.
Keil's directions were too chipper to qualify as the drill sergeant variety, but she got her points across with cheerful bellows.
"Let's get in our stroller posture, ladies: Head up, abs tight, squeeze those glutes!"
"Keep those belly buttons to the spine!"
"If you're curling (your wrists), you're working your ligaments and wrists instead of those biceps!"
Women appeased fussy babies with snacks and toys. Whenever possible, Keil had mothers post their strollers in front of them as they bent, rotated and ran in place.
At one point, Keil led moms in several choruses of "The Wheels on The Bus" as they rocked from side to side in a stretch band exercise.
The last part of the class took place on mats inside the center. Mothers who wanted to take their babies out of their mobile seats held them on their laps or lay them on their backs while they did ab work or push-ups. A few sneaked in a kiss or two to the child beside them.
"If parents are good role models, their exercise and fitness (habits) will be continued by their children," Keil said. "My goal is to be as inclusive as possible. I let moms come with older children. Dads are welcomed to come as well."
Keil's classes appear to be the only mother-child-stroller workout programs in Clark County. A similar program, Stroller Strides, has no listing for Southwest Washington on its Web site. Representatives at several area health clubs say they don't have similar classes, although Kids Club Fun & Fitness in Salmon Creek offers a "movement and music" program in which mothers and babies go through some child-oriented exercises together, and there is a swimming program for infants and moms. The Firstenburg center has aquatic exercise classes for parents and children ages 6 months to 3 years, but Baby Boot Camp is its only stroller-based fitness class.
Carrie Lewis of Vancouver, 29, said she enrolled in her first series of Baby Boot Camp classes in March after rejecting the idea of putting her son in a gym day care while she worked out.
"He's at the age where separation anxiety is setting in," she said of Ben, a 10-month-old blond with a ready smile. "For me to have him right there with me is wonderful, a big plus for me."
Prior to Baby Boot Camp, Lewis said she and her husband used their treadmill. But she admits she didn't do much resistance training.
Now on leave from her job as a second-grade teacher with Evergreen Public Schools, Lewis said Keil understands the mothers in her class are at different levels of fitness. If Lewis can't keep up with the jogging, for example, she'll walk quickly instead.
"I will be the matron of honor at my younger sister's wedding in October, so that was a big motivator for me to get back in shape," Lewis said.
For Monigan, going on a July cruise to the Caribbean is one incentive to stick with Baby Boot Camp. But she also has been pleased with the results she's seen since joining in October. She's dropped from a size 18 in pants to a 12, and hopes to be down to her pre-pregnancy weight in time for the cruise.
"When I started Baby Boot Camp, I could barely get up the stairs without huffing and puffing. Now I go upstairs (holding) the baby, and she weighs 33 pounds," said Monigan, 32, who was in retail management before taking time off to stay home with Simone.
Moms who register through Firstenburg pay $100 for six weeks, two classes per week, with no rain checks. In addition, Keil offers packages in various locations -- Firstenburg, Gymboree, Esther Short Park, Salmon Creek Park and Westfield Vancouver Mall -- for various prices, from $10 per class for 12 classes to $200 for three months of unlimited sessions. She expects to have six- and 12-month contracts available soon at discounted rates.
All first classes are free. Prenatal classes are available as well. Generally, children coming with their mothers to workouts are 6 weeks to 5 years old.
Keil teaches about 10 classes a week herself. She employs two other instructors and says the three of them are all nationally certified personal trainers.
Besides promoting fitness, Keil said Baby Boot Camp is involved in various social activities and community fundraisers, such as the National Multiple Sclerosis Society's MS Walk in Vancouver on April 22. Family field trips and moms' nights out also are scheduled.
Long a fitness buff, Keil switched careers after the birth of her son, Benjamin, in July 2004. Keil had progressed as far as she could as a bank auditor with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. without moving to Washington, D.C., which she was unwilling to do.
Benjamin's birth inspired her to find work that would enable her to avoid placing him in day care on a full-time basis. Buying a Baby Boot Camp franchise and pursuing additional training in fitness and nutrition combined several of her passions. The Washington state native and her husband moved from San Francisco to Vancouver in the summer of 2005 to be closer to her family in Seattle.
Keil, 39, said she's been surprised by the enthusiasm with which area residents have embraced Baby Boot Camp.
"(We recently had) over 15 moms in the pouring-down rain. Crazy!" she said.
Crazy or not, Baby Boot Camp mothers seem to be thriving. Hill, 34, a teacher and mother of 7-month-old Daniel, said she believes the classes are good for her son because he watches other, older children and wants to do what they're doing. Hill is probably more fit than most new mothers -- she worked out until just days before her son was born -- but she said moms don't have to be athletes to join.
"For me, if I tried to be in (an informal) mothers' group walk, we'd just chat and never push ourselves," she said. "Cindy is able to pinpoint what different people need."
Keil also offers nutritional challenges, which draw mixed results. Determined to follow Keil's suggestion to add more vegetables to the family's diet, Monigan decided to add pureed carrots in her daughter's chocolate soy milk. Monigan said Simone stopped drinking the beverage altogether until the additive was removed.
"I told Sharese she was carrying it a little too far. But she got an A for effort," Keil said.