Some say happiness comes from making a career of doing what you love. If that’s the case, Lake Highlands resident Rachel Van Castle should be one of our area’s happiest people.

She recently combined two of the things she loves most – fitness and motherhood – into a new business by making a workout video for moms and their babies.

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It started when Van Castle, a fitness professional formerly with Baylor Tom Landry Fitness Center, gave birth to Maxine, who’s now 2.

“I gained 50 pounds with the pregnancy, and with the lack of sleep and demands of being a new mom, my energy had never been lower,” she says. “I was desperate to start feeling like I was more in control of my body.”

That’s when she realized she didn’t have to wait for time alone to exercise. She could do it not only around Maxine, but with her.

“I noticed that by playing with my daughter, I could turn it into a form of exercise. I started by doing push-ups over her, then began using her as resistance in exercises as she got a little older. Maxine loved it, and I started feeling better.”

In March of last year, the Dallas Morning News ran a story about Van Castle’s mom-and-baby workouts.

“A lot of peole noticed that,” she says. “It had a huge, overwhelming response. People thought it was a great idea.”

Realizing the demand for a workout of that type, Van Castle and her husband, Fred, decided to make a mom/baby exercise video. Neither had done anything like it before, but luckily, they had an in: her brother is a director and producer in Los Angeles.

She wrote the script and developed exercises for the video based on weekly focus groups held with local moms and babies. She also hired consultants to make certain the exercises were safe.

Along the way, she recruited several locals to help. Lake Highlands resident Rosie Manousos stepped in as make-up artist. And neighborhood resident Mary Thomson and her son, Ryan, are one of three sets of moms and babies in the video.

“I also want it to inspire mothers to continue to take better care of themselves,” Van Castle says. “Some women end up losing themselves because they have so many demands on them.”

And if the video takes off, more are planned for the future.

“We have a big vision,” she says. “Our goal is to make fitness a family affair, and it starts with parents being role models.”

For information on the Infantastic! Workout video, visit www.infantastic.com or www.amazon.com.