Five easy ways to prepare your birthing muscles for a shorter and less painful birth
There is a lot of research and attention in the birth world about specific movements, positions, and techniques that pregnant women should be doing in pregnancy to create suppleness and strength in the body that leads to LESS discomfort in pregnancy and more ease in birth!
To cut a long story short. If you want to feel good in pregnancy and birth, then MOVE, no matter how tired you are! If we introduce intentional movement every day in pregnancy, the body can feel strong and fit for birth. With regular and consistent practice daily, these movements become second nature to a mama.
You may be thinking your life is too busy and full, you're too tired and exhausted, but the question to ask is how and where in your busy day can you fit it in? If you love watching TV at night, then consider replacing the couch with a birth ball (see tips on rocking below).
There are also changes you can make every day that incorporates better positioning and movement (see tips on correcting your maternal posture below).
This can all make a difference, but PLEASE don’t forget to set aside intentional exercise each week.
Join my yoga class on Thursday’s and commit to walking each day!
Maternal posture and habits
Good posture and daily habits are the cornerstone to avoiding issues such as back pain, pelvic pain, cramps, swelling, abdominal separation, pelvic floor problems and poor fetal positioning! Our ancestors were much more active than we are today spending hours changing from standing to squatting positions harvesting food from the fields, scrubbing kitchen floors or handwashing clothes. Now we spend a lot of time sitting!
Here are some tips for you to think about:
Sit on your sit bones! Elevate yourself onto a rolled towel, if need be, to allow pelvis to tilt forward, you knee lower than hips, your ankles in line with knees, feet flat on floor.
Don’t sit for longer than 20 minutes. Get up, walk around, and do some stretches in your calves, upper body, arms, and neck.
Don’t jack-knife out of bed or the bath! Always roll to your side and use your forearm to support yourself to sitting first, then get up.
If you have to pick up a toddler or laundry basket, bend right down with a neutral spine and lift on exhalation breath while engaging your transverse abdominals‘hugging your baby in’.
When you need to pee, try and encourage it too all to come out, lift up your belly to take the weight of the bladder and let the pee pee go.
Don’t push or strain when you have bowel movements and don’t sit on the toilet longer than you need.
Sit on a birth ball instead of chair or couch.
Breathing
Take pause each day to observe your breath. Take 5 – 10 intentional breaths in through the nose and out through nose and observe the relationship between the diaphragm (your breathing muscle) moving downward when you inhale and upward when you exhale. Then connect this observation with your pelvic floor. Notice as you inhale your pelvic floor responds by relaxing, as you exhale there is a natural ‘lift’ of pelvic floor. If you don’t feel this, just imagine what it would it feel like and it will come in time.
Walking
Walking is the best exercise to help create suppleness in the birthing muscles, especially the psoas! The psoas is large muscle that connects from your 12th rib, through the pelvis connecting into a point on the femur. It is also the deepest muscle in your core supporting internal organs and is directly connected to the breathing muscle via ligaments and fascia. When we sit a lot, it gets shortened and this can actually be a key contributor to back and pelvic pain but also breathing problems. Walking lengthens out the psoas and when we combine this with a rhythmic deep breath, we can further encourage release in the psoas.
Rocking
Rocking, circles and spirals feel really good in pregnancy and labour and can get us into a deep state of relaxation. The other benefit of rocking is that it helps release tension in the muscles surrounding the uterus and helps give baby space to move through the pelvic brim. You can practice rocking and spirals standing when waiting for your kettle to boil, or you can sit down and rock forward and back for 10 minutes while listening to a meditation/relaxation. You can even get out the birth ball and do some rocking and spirals when watching TV.
Lunges
Lunges stretch the hip flexor muscles (especially psoas!) and open the pelvis, which helps keep these muscles supple for birth. Why is this important? Supple muscles will help baby move into the ideal birth position when in labour because the uterus and pelvis is more likely to be in balance and the baby is able to navigate its way through the pelvic openings more easily. You can do standing lunges or kneeling lunges, and even side lunges. I teach this and more in my classes, lunges are a big theme in my sequences for this very reason!