will be found, furthermore, that the limit of endurance is reached
more quickly toward the end of pregnancy than at the beginning; a few
patients will find it necessary to stop exercise altogether for a
week or two before they are delivered.

Walking is the best kind of exercise, but long tramps are inadvisable
during pregnancy, except for those who have previously been
accustomed to them. Most women who are pregnant find that a two or
three-mile walk daily is all they enjoy, and very few are inclined to
indulge in six miles, which is generally accepted as the upper limit.
Perhaps the best way to measure a walk is by the length of time it
consumes. Accordingly, a very sensible plan is to begin with a walk
just long enough not to be fatiguing and to increase it by five
minutes each day until able to walk an hour without becoming
overtired. It is always advisable not to crowd the exercise of a day
into a single period but rather to take it in several installments,
for example, an hour in the morning, and another in the afternoon.
Under all circumstances, it must never be forgotten that the feeling
of fatigue is a peremptory signal to stop, no matter how short the
walk has been.

Very few outdoor sports can be unconditionally recommended to a
prospective mother. Because athletic exercise is either too violent
or else jolts or jars the body a great deal, it is especially
dangerous in the early months of pregnancy--the only time when it is
likely to be at all attractive. Croquet, alone, perhaps, is free from
these objections. Although golf and tennis are by no means certain to
bring on miscarriage, they involve a risk which, slight though it may
perhaps be, will not be assumed by cautious women.