https://orcid.org/0009-0009-8111-9137
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Kirsten A L Morris, Claire Hooks, Lauren Godier-McBard, Response to Schmitt et al. “Effect of Serial Pregnancies on Physical Fitness”, Military Medicine, Volume 190, Issue 3-4, March/April 2025, Pages 104–105, https://doi.org/10.1093/milmed/usae459
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Dear Editor
We are writing to express concerns regarding the recently published article titled “Effect of Serial Pregnancies on Physical Fitness” by Schmitt et al. in Military Medicine, published online on June 29, 2024. We congratulate the authors on conducting research on pregnancy and the post-partum period; highly relevant phenomena to military service, as the numbers of service women, who are predominantly of reproductive age, rise in Armed Forces worldwide.
The paper outlines a retrospective cohort study of active duty soldiers who delivered a singleton pregnancy of >32 weeks over a 6-year period ending in 2017 (n = 2,103). The list of service women who delivered in this time period was cross-referenced against the Army Physical Fitness Test scores and height and weight metrics. The study then focuses on women who delivered their first two pregnancies during this period and had available post-partum fitness test data (n = 16). The primary outcome variables are raw scores for push-ups, sit-ups, and run events, with secondary outcome variables being fitness test failures and body mass index measures. Overall, the study suggests that a second pregnancy is associated with “progressive worsening of performance.”
