- all because a pregnant woman decided to go horseback riding.
You probably didn't mean it in this way, but this comes across as pretty judgy.
I mean what's your point? Women should spend nine months in a cotton-wool sling, never leaving the house, because they lose the right to their own agency once pregnant? What if the house falls down?
As I've talked about in other threads here, I was 5 months pregnant before I knew, and so I was doing a lot of things that pregnant mothers are generally advised not to. My kid is fine. In fact she's better than fine. We tend to panic and wrap expectant mothers up in cotton wool, all the while forgetting that this is what their bodies are designed to do. What nature intended. Pregnant or not, women are tough and fierce and pregnancy only escalates that.
She shouldn't have gone riding because she was thrown? That's like 'you shouldn't have left the house because you were mauled by that escaped lion.'
I was thrown at 5 months. Quite badly. I was eventing and came off during the cross country phase when we landed badly after a tiger trap.
When I found out I was pregnant I stopped jumping, but I kept riding. Pretty much everyone I know who is horsey did the same thing. We all kept riding. Admittedly there were certain horses I didn't ride during that time because I couldn't trust them, but my big guy I would trust with my life. Incidentally, the first time my daughter rode a horse she was a couple of weeks old and was nestled in her sling while I rode. It continued that way until she was three and we got her a pony of her own. It may sound to outsiders like bad parenting, but when necessity meets passion it's just something you deal with the best way you can.
If we're just talking about gentle walking while on horseback, then there might not be any reason to stop at all except that after about seven months or so getting on a horse might not be worth all the sweating and cursing.
This. Completely. I stopped when I reached the point that I couldn't haul myself up any more.
Plus, there comes a point when you just need to pee all the time and the pressure on your bladder is enough to make you stop.
She might well stop when her pregnancy reaches that inevitable stage where the public believes she is under their general guidance. If they don't approve, they will shake their no-no fingers at her and lecture her and perhaps even pull her off the horse. She will likely give in because who wants to be pointed out as a bad mother-to-be.
Oh god yes, I experienced this a lot. Thankfully I was on a yard where several other folk had kids and knew and understood the situation. There were horses I would ride and horses I wouldn't. I mean, hacking out my 15 year old that I bottlefed is completely different to riding my newly broken 3 year old. I think people need to trust that we, as horse women, know our limitations, but that we also know our animals and what is likely, or unlikely, to happen.
If your question includes personal limits, I probably wouldn't do it at all. If she's an experienced rider, perhaps she'd limit her riding to horses she knows and trusts. Along with the other factors, pregnant women vary widely in how careful or adventurous they are with it. So it could show a lot about her personality, as well as her relationship with her husband. He doesn't like it? So, she sneaks, tells him he's not included in the decision, honors his feelings on it, or what? Sorry, probably getting far away from your question...
This also. The day I found out that I was (very) pregnant I was giving a trampoline lesson (I used to be an instructor) which involved me dropping onto my stomach and somersaulting through the air repeatedly. I certainly panicked about that afterwards, but baby was fine. Turns out that all that fluid in there is there for a reason.
So it got a bit uncomfortable with the bump.
