Already in a position that seemed far too much to ask of a woman six months' pregnant, Liz Cahill maneuvered from her upside down "V" pose to another ridiculously tough configuration known as an extended fire hydrant.

While still face down and gripping a bar in front of her, Cahill turned her belly to the right and thrust her right leg up and out to resemble a dog doing its business. A very pregnant dog.

Perhaps crazier still, Cahill, 30, and her also-pregnant sister, Carrie Rorer, 34, who was similarly contorted alongside her, were each paying for this hour of sweating, panting and manipulation $400 for a 10-session package.

That doesn't surprise Kelly McBride. She was confident a niche market existed when she formed Belly Pilates in Bryn Mawr in 2006. Then again, she was working off what she considered solid research: three pregnancies of her own.

Not that running a business focused on pre- and postnatal mothers' fitness was her original career plan.

"This is Kelly 3.0," McBride, who lives in Wayne, joked last week.

The Brookhaven native had been an advertising major at Temple University. With training in computer graphic arts, she wound up teaching multimedia presentation at Moore College of Art and Design in the early 1990s. She also went into business preparing multimedia presentations for corporate clients, which lasted about five years.

"Then I entered into my second career: mommy," McBride said.

After her first two children were born, in 1997 and 2000, "I realized I needed to prioritize, and my children were my first priority," she said. She also realized something generations before her had already discovered: "Motherhood could be very challenging."

That got McBride thinking about how it could be made easier with fitness.

Read more from the original source:
Diane Mastrull: A Pilates business pregnant with possibility