Introduction: Exercise during pregnancy helps maintaining physical fitness and adequate weight of pregnant women, easier and shorter childbirth and the development of the fetus. Some women, even though that they have no health problems during pregnancy, are not physically active or cease with sports activities altogether. One of the main reasons for the latter is lack of information, misconceptions, and fear of negative consequences from pregnancy exercise. Purpose: The purpose of this final thesis is to research the impact of exercise on the pregnant woman and her fetus. Our goal is to determine how exercise affects the fetus's heartbeat, number of movements and heart rate, blood pressure and the pregnant woman's body temperature. Based on our findings we wish to define if exercise during pregnancy is safe for the pregnant woman and the fetus. Methods: In this final thesis we used the descriptive method with a systematic overview of scientific literature. While searching we used a timeframe, from the year 2000 to 2017. We searched for literature in English and Slovene in the following databases: CINAHL, Medline, ScienceDirect, Wiley Online Library, The Cochrane Collaboration, Springer Link in Scopus. Eleven researches were used for qualitative meta-synthesis. Results: The fetal heart rate directly after exercise was different than before the pregnant woman’s physical activity, while the number of movements of the fetus is not higher compared to before the start of the physical activity of each individual woman. Hear trate, diastolic and systolic blood pressure and body temperature of the pregnant woman rise during exercise. Discussion and conclusion: Physical activity of the pregnant woman has an effect on the observed variables and is, if performed in accordance with the current recommendations, safe for the fetus as well as the pregnant woman. Exercise during pregnancy is an important intervention for maintaining general health and psychological wellbeing of each individual, without any harmful consequences for the development of the fetus. In order to stimulate more women, whose medical condition allows them to exercise, towards physical activity, additional information of higher quality must be provided to pregnant women. Additionally, medical workers and other responsible professionals need to be educated on safety and benefits of pregnancy exercise.
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