Trimester Three – Birth Prep Exercises Copy

These will help support you in labour and strengthen the “pushing muscles” to make each push count.

Ok ladies it is coming up to the crunch time, don’t worry you have built up amazing strength to get to this point, but we just wanted to hone in on a few specifics that you might want to do a few more of. We do use a balance ball/birthing ball for some of these.
So let me ask you, what do we need to have to help us through labour that we might have control over?

• Energy
• Strength
• Endurance
• Focused Mind

Yep! All of the above!

You have built a lot of this already, so let’s start with “Focused Mind”.

Breathing

So under-rated overall but so incredibly powerful in labour, we are a firm believer in that.

The key to getting your breathing right is all about pace and power, it can help you focus, it can help you stay calm no matter what is going on around you, it can help you push if you stay with a rhythm and don’t over think it.

Now this is all from our experience as mummies not as hypno-birthing or other professionals in this field so please do explore those avenues if you can see you will benefit from it. There are some amazing resources out there now.

“I don’t know how to breathe”!

I know as soon as you start thinking about it, it goes but all we want you to do is find a quiet place and practice so when labour starts you are ready to attack!

Slow your breathing right down, inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth, find a focal point and stick with it. I used to practice for about a minute, slowly increasing the power of my breath (not speed) and then slowing it down again over the course of the minute as this is approximately how long a contraction is. I would then repeat a couple more times.

When you have a contraction, it builds and builds up to a peak and then starts to come down again. The key point here is to not increase the speed of your breath within this but to keep it slow and controlled but increase the power, so your breath will be stronger.
Remember the more you tense up, the more it hurts as the uterus is a muscle remember so if you are tensing everything around it its going to squeeze more.

So, keep it slow and your mind focused. This also helps if things get out of your control and intervention is needed, use this tool to stay calm, it really does work.

In the workouts we showed you the pelvic tilt.
This is where I would go back to this towards the end and really focus on the lower abdominals as these really do help when it comes to the pushing.
On all 4’s you want to tip your hips (not arch your back) under and squeeze your abdominals and breath for 5 counts and release. Repeat 5-10 times depending on time available.

This is so effective and can be done whilst you have the television on in the evening.