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Eating well in pregnancy including recipe ideas

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Eating well in pregnancy — First Steps Nutrition Trust

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First Steps Nutrition Trust is a charity which provides clear, evidence-based and independent information and support for good nutrition from pre-conception to five years of age.

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Exercises that can optimise your chance of a straightforward birth

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Exercises that can optimise your chance of a straightforward birth

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Walk daily - build it into your life, even a short walk will help

Swim

Yoga or Pilates

Dance

Wear the correct size bra

See a physio, osteopath/chiropractor if you know you have pelvic or spinal alignment problems following a fall or accident to hips or legs.  (Check they are familiar with pregnancy.)

Avoid reclining on soft sofas

Use correct size birth ball to mobilise and free sacrum

Calf stretches to improve/maintain pelvic balance (6 mins a day)

plantar fascia release - run a tennis ball (or similar) under each foot for a minute

calf stretch - something under front of foot, to stretch the calf, for a minute each side

pendulum swing - one foot on step and swing other leg forwards and backwards

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What is it? How does it work? How to exercise it.

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A a review of the evidence that leads to the suggestion that pregnant women should sleep on their left side

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What it feels like and what you can do to make sure you are supported

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Perinatal anxiety can happen any time during pregnancy, through birth and after, and it's common to experience it alongside depression. Someone suffering with prenatal (antenatal) or postnatal anxiety may feel tense, nervous and unable to relax. They may also avoid certain situations, experience panic attacks and suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

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Perinatal anxiety can happen any time during pregnancy, through birth and after, and it's common to experience it alongside depression. Someone suffering with prenatal (antenatal) or postnatal anxiety may feel tense, nervous and unable to relax. They may also avoid certain situations, experience panic attacks and suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

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Tips and avice for women who are experiancing pelvic gurdle pain

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The Pelvic Partnership provides women and healthcare professionals with information about best practice for the treatment and management of pregnancy-related PGP, and to enable and empower women to access the right treatment. We have packed our website with information about PGP, so please do have a read, and use and share this resource.

Free PGP leaflets

With support from the National Lottery and Dreamgenii, we have developed leaflets explaining PGP and how it can be treated with manual therapy. To find out more please click here to request a FREE leaflet about PGP or to click here to buy a pack of leaflets to share with friends, family or your clients.

"PGP is treatable" ebook

In our new ebook we share practical suggestions and realistic solutions to help you manage your pregnancy-related PGP throughout pregnancy and after your baby is born. This ebook was produced as part of our COVID-19 Response Project, funded by the National Lottery's Coronavirus Community Support Fund.

The ebook is available on AmazonKindle or FOR FREE as a PDF here.

Talking about pelvic girdle pain with your GP or midwife: a toolkit for women with PGP

We have developed a free resource for women with PGP to help them at healthcare appointments.

We have heard from many women with PGP that it is challenging to describe their PGP to GPs or midwifes with little knowledge about the condition and how it can affect women physically and emotionally.

This FREE resource helps women find the words describe their symptoms, how PGP affects them and how to ask for the right referrals for further treatment, pain relief and support services.

Download Talking about pelvic girdle pain with your GP or midwife here.

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The Pelvic Partnership provides women and healthcare professionals with information about best practice for the treatment and management of pregnancy-related PGP, and to enable and empower women to access the right treatment. We have packed our website with information about PGP, so please do have a read, and use and share this resource.

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Find your nearest class for gentle exercises and breathing techniques

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Relax and unwind

Yoga can benefit pregnant women in lots of different ways. Staying active through light exercise does your body and baby good, and Yoga for Pregnancy offers special benefits. Relax, sleep better, soothe aches and pains, and feel more positive.

Supportive socialising

Our Yoga classes are for women only, so they're a great way to meet other mothers-to-be. You're welcome to join from week 12 of your pregnancy, right up until birth. We make sure our classes are a calm and supportive place to meet and share.

A physical approach

Our Yoga for Pregnancy teachers have been given special training in physical skills for labour. We focus on physical learning and helping you to connect with your body and baby. From deep breathing to different positions, you'll feel more confident about giving birth.

Open to all

Every mother's welcome to join our Yoga classes. Whether you're pregnant with you first child or your seventh, and whether you've a specific challenge to work through or not, we will support you.

Flexible sessions

Our Yoga for Pregnancy classes run on a weekly basis. This makes them easier to come to if you've got work or family commitments. Use the search on this page to find your nearest class today.

Our Yoga teachers

Our friendly Yoga for Pregnancy classes led by Yoga specialists who have had extra training in physical skills. Knowledgeable, friendly and experienced, they'll make you feel welcome.

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Yoga for Pregnancy can have all sorts of benefits. Whether you're a fitness fan or are new to exercise classes and yoga, our gentle yoga sessions can help you get your body ready for birth.This course is on hold. Some NCT course leaders may be offering these courses privately in the meantime, visit the Birth and Beyo...

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Top tips for maintaining your physical strength

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Find out about the benefits of exercise in pregnancy, including which kinds of exercise you can do, such as yoga and swimming, and which you should avoid.

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An interesting narative about

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The last days of pregnancy are a distinct time of in-between. It's a tricky time for mothers, as these last few days are biological and psychological events.
She's curled up on the couch, waiting, a ball of baby and emotions. A scrambled pile of books on pregnancy, labor, baby names, breastfeeding &#8230; not one more word can be absorbed. The birth supplies are loaded in a laundry basket, ready for action. The freezer is filled with meals, the car seat installed, the camera charged. It's time to hurry up and wait. Not a comfortable place to be, but wholly necessary.

The last days of pregnancy - sometimes stretching to agonizing weeks - are a distinct place, time, event, stage. It is a time of in between. Neither here nor there. Your old self and your new self, balanced on the edge of a pregnancy. One foot in your old world, one foot in a new world.

Related: Pregnancy Week by Week

Shouldn't there be a word for this state of being, describing the time and place where mothers linger, waiting to be called forward?

Germans have a word, zwischen, which means between. I've co-opted that word for my own obstetrical uses. When I sense the discomfort and tension of late pregnancy in my clients, I suggest that they are now in The Time of Zwischen. The time of in between, where the opening begins. Giving it a name gives it dimension, an experience closer to wonder than endurance.

I tell these beautiful, round, swollen, weepy women to go with it and be okay there. Feel it, think it, don't push it away. Write it down, sing really loudly when no one else is home, go commune with nature, or crawl into your own mama's lap so she can rub your head until you feel better. I tell their men to let go of their worry; this is an early sign of labor. I encourage them to sequester themselves if they need space, to go out if they need distraction, to enjoy the last hours of this life-as-they-now-know-it. I try to give them permission to follow the instinctual gravitational pulls that are at work within them, just as real and necessary as labor.

The discomforts of late pregnancy are easy to Google: painful pelvis, squished bladder, swollen ankles, leaky nipples, weight unevenly distributed in a girth that makes scratching an itch at ankle level a feat of flexibility. "You might find yourself teary and exhausted," says one website, "but your baby is coming soon!" Cheer up, sweetie, you're having a baby. More messaging that what is going on is incidental and insignificant.

Related: Use of Marijuana During Pregnancy

What we don't have is reverence or relevance - or even a working understanding of the vulnerability and openness a woman experiences at this time. Our language and culture fails us. This surely explains why many women find this time so complicated and tricky. But whether we recognize it or not, these last days of pregnancy are a distinct biologic and psychological event, essential to the birth of a mother.

We don't scientifically understand the complex hormones at play that loosen both her hips and her awareness. In fact, this uncomfortable time of aching is an early form of labor in which a woman begins opening her cervix and her soul. Someday, maybe we will be able to quantify this hormonal advance - the prolactin, oxytocin, cortisol, relaxin. But for now, it is still shrouded in mystery, and we know only how to measure thinning and dilation.

"You know that place between sleep and awake, the place where you can still remember dreaming? That's where I'll always love you, Peter Pan. That's where I'll be waiting." -Tinkerbell

I believe that this is more than biological. It is spiritual. To give birth, whether at home in a birth tub with candles and family or in a surgical suite with machines and a neonatal team, a woman must go to the place between this world and the next, to that thin membrane between here and there. To the place where life comes from, to the mystery, in order to reach over to bring forth the child that is hers. The heroic tales of Odysseus are with us, each ordinary day. This round woman is not going into battle, but she is going to the edge of her being where every resource she has will be called on to assist in this journey.

We need time and space to prepare for that journey. And somewhere, deep inside us, at a primal level, our cells and hormones and mind and soul know this, and begin the work with or without our awareness.

I call out Zwischen in prenatals as a way of offering comfort and, also, as a way of offering protection. I see how simple it is to exploit and abuse this time. A scheduled induction is seductive, promising a sense of control. Fearful and confused family can trigger a crisis of confidence. We are not a culture that waits for anything, nor are we believers in normal birth; waiting for a baby can feel like insanity. Giving this a name points her toward listening and developing her own intuition. That, in turn, is a powerful training ground for motherhood.

Today, I am waiting for a lovely new mother named Allison to call me, to announce that her Zwischen is ended and labor has begun. I am in my own in between place, waiting. My opportunity to grow and open is a lovely gift she gives me, in choosing me to attend her birth.

Jana Studelska CPM/LM, is a licensed midwife practicing in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. She has been working with babies and mothers since 1998--as a La Leche leader, a certified doula, a childbirth educator, a regional birth network board member, and finally as a credentialed midwife. She is an author and writer, and has won several national awards for her work. Currently, she is the MANA Region 4 Representative for the Midwives Alliance, representing the upper midwest. She lives in Duluth, MN, with her husband, teen-aged boys, and a herd of dogs.

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The Last Days of Pregnancy: A Place of In-Between

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The last days of pregnancy are a distinct time of in-between. It's a tricky time for mothers, as these last few days are biological and psychological events. She's curled up on the couch, waiting, a ball of baby and emotions. A scrambled pile of books on pregnancy, labor, baby names...