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• Posted June 5, 2026

Too Much Sitting In Pregnancy Doubles Risk Of Complications

In the old days, expecting mothers were encouraged to take it easy as much as possible.

But that advice had it completely backward, a new study says.

There are higher odds of pregnancy complications for women who spend more time sitting, compared to those who include even light activity in their daily routine, researchers reported recently in the journal JAMA.

These complications included gestational hypertension (high blood pressure), preeclampsia, gestational diabetes and preterm birth, researchers said.

“The big finding was that women who were sitting for over 10 hours a day were developing twice as many adverse pregnancy outcomes as women who were sitting for shorter amounts of time,” said lead researcher Bethany Barone Gibbs. She's the chair of epidemiology and biostatistics at the West Virginia University School of Public Health in Morgantown.

“We were expecting to find that more sitting may be less healthy in pregnancy, but the magnitude of extra risk was bigger than we thought it would be,” she said in a news release. “Our study supports the idea that a daily activity pattern with lots of prolonged sitting should be discouraged during pregnancy.”

For the study, researchers tracked the physical activity of 470 pregnant women in their first trimester of pregnancy for a week. The women lived in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Iowa.

Participants wore activity monitors strapped to their thighs to measure how much they were sitting and how much physical activity they were getting.

Results showed that 2 out of 5 women who sat for 10 or more hours a day had a pregnancy complication, compared to 1 in 5 women who sat about seven hours a day.

“These adverse pregnancy outcomes, especially preeclampsia and gestational hypertension, have become much more common in the last two decades,” Barone Gibbs said. “From a public health perspective, it’s very concerning. We are looking for solutions to decrease these outcomes because currently there are very few options.”

More vigorous exercise is known to lower the risk of pregnancy complications, but she acknowledged that not all everyone can tackle that level of activity.

“It’s one thing to say, ‘everyone should exercise,’ but we know there are a lot of barriers to that, especially for pregnant women because they’re fatigued, they have nausea, their bodies are changing and they have musculoskeletal pain,” she said. “We wanted to think about some alternatives for pregnant women to be active but not at the level of a supervised exercise plan.”

These results suggest that simply sitting less and moving more could be key to maintaining a healthy pregnancy, researchers said.

“Our findings suggest it doesn’t necessarily have to be exercise, just getting up and moving around more may help you avoid these pregnancy complications,” Barone Gibbs said.

Pregnant people might consider using a wearable device to monitor their steps and prompt them to get up now and then, she added.

“Most of these will give you a reminder if you’re sitting for an hour that it’s time to get up and start moving around a bit, take a little walk or just do something,” she said.

“If they don’t have access to a wearable, set a reminder on your phone or computer that it’s time to get up and do something to get your blood flowing,” Barone Gibbs continued. “Another thing we tell pregnant women in interventions is, ‘listen to your body.’ If they’ve been sitting for a long time and their back hurts or they have discomfort, it’s time to get up and move around.”

More information

Johns Hopkins Medicine has more on exercise during pregnancy.

SOURCE: West Virginia University, news release, June 2, 2026