Postnatal Pilates

The fourth trimester is the immediate postnatal period. Recently, it’s become more widely understood that we need to honour this period in a conscious and nurturing way, for our long-term physical recovery as well as our mental and emotional health. The first three months of motherhood is a time of huge transition and change. Bliss, upheaval and mayhem. It will take this whole time, at least, for your emotions and body to settle into a sense of vaguely confident ‘normality’. It’s totally to be expected that you’ll feel discombobulated and chaotic at times. Think of it as starting a new job: you’d imagine that the first few months would be a steep learning curve and that you’d feel way out of your comfort zone. It’s no different for your new job as a mother/mum of two/three (or more!). This chapter walks you through the particular demands of this time of your postnatal life and introduces some exercises that are perfect for balancing body and mind at this stage.

In the first few days and weeks after giving birth you’ll probably feel bruised and sore, whatever birth experience you’ve had. Some women feel like a superhero, with such a sense of euphoria that anything seems possible – it can be hard to imagine that you have to take it easy and rest while you’re riding this high. But equally, you may fall into the camp of women who feel depleted and exhausted by birth and early days. That was certainly me first time round, and if this is you, please don’t push yourself to hold up a façade of ‘normal’. Lie down as much as you can. Cuddle your tiny newborn to get the oxytocin flowing and soothe both of your nervous systems; your breathing helps to regulate your baby’s breathing. Snuggle with lots of calming skin-to-skin contact in those early days. Eat warming, healing broth. It takes time to complete your metamorphosis into motherhood, and ‘normal’ takes on a different appearance from now on.

The newborn phase is a rollercoaster time. It’s a watershed of all of the anticipation of the past nearly year, finally holding your baby in your arms (and even more if you’ve been trying for a while). You will probably feel exhilarated and ecstatic. But you also might feel a bit shocked, indifferent and exhausted – and this is normal, too. Be wary of allowing hundreds of visitors in to see and hold your baby if you really don’t feel up to it – and certainly don’t be the one making tea if you do. Follow the advice of many a fourth-trimester guru: a week in bed, a week around the bed. It’s perfectly acceptable and desirable to enjoy lying down, skin to skin with your baby and not moving very much or expending any energy. Talking to lots of people, ‘showing face’ and smiling while other people cuddle your new baby is expending energy, both for you and your baby. It is a joyful time taking your baby home, but it is also unprecedentedly stressful, and if you’re trying to establish breastfeeding it can have a detrimental effect to have lots of visitors vying for your baby’s cuddles or watching you while you’re trying to get to grips with a challenging new skill.

Give yourself a break if you don’t feel 100 per cent happy every moment. Emotions run high and ‘baby blues’ are to be expected a few days after birth, usually coinciding with your milk fully coming in (whether you breastfeed or not), the hormonal watershed after having birthed the placenta (your hormone-creating factory for the past nine months) and the exhaustion of 24-hour days taking its toll. If you are feeling very on edge, anxious or detached and depressed by the time your six-week check comes around, please reach out to your health visitor or GP and ask what support there is available. There should be no stigma to mental health issues, so please don’t succumb to ‘I’m fine’ syndrome if you’re anything but. Keep a close eye on your mental health for the first year of your baby’s life – and beyond. Each phase of motherhood brings different challenges, things get easier but something else always gets harder. Your sleep deprivation might accumulate and have an effect on your resilience. Be kind to yourself. Always come back to your breathing and your awareness of the physical symptoms of stress and anxiety.

The immediate postnatal period often feels like your body isn’t your own, your baby may have vacated the premises but even if you’re not breastfeeding, your boobs will have been taken over by post-birth milk creation. You will rarely have any time when you’re not physically connected to your new housemate. And this is amazing in so many beautiful ways, but can occasionally feel like you’ve lost yourself a bit and you need space without anyone ‘on’ you. You might have loved your baby bump, and now your belly wobbles like a deflating water balloon and you feel, literally, empty. Internally, it feels like everything’s been swapped around, as if all the furniture in your house has been surreptitiously rearranged, and maybe a supporting wall has been knocked down. Now is the time to focus on reconnecting to your body, re-establishing your breathing, your pelvic floor, your awesome abdominals.

You might even feel despair about your postnatal body, which can trigger deeply held issues with negative body image. It’s important to remember that you are vulnerable in body–mind right now, and you’ll reap better long-term rewards if you don’t rush it. As we discussed previously, it takes time to recover your strength. HIIT, ‘body shreds’ and Boot Camps are not the way forwards initially, which can be a bitter pill to swallow if you were a gym bunny pre-children. Be patient with yourself. It’s now: it’s not forever. It’s really important to take the time to recover fully from childbirth, to help prevent problems with future pregnancies and in your pelvic floor for life.

The six-week GP check – where you are pronounced ‘back to normal’. In some surgeries this isn’t even viewed as a necessary check any more and you have to request it. If this is the case for your local surgery, please don’t skip it, it’s really important to check in on your physical recovery and access a forum for asking questions about your healing. This check is not, and never has been, meant to be a ‘clearance for exercise’, yet for some reason that’s what it’s understood as being. It generally covers a discussion about contraception (although you may feel like this has never felt less relevant) and your mental health in this early period. It rarely comprehensively checks your physical healing. Only a full physio check at this point would truly ‘clear you for exercise’. Please speak up if you don’t feel that you are being given more than a cursory glance-over. Make sure you ask your GP about:

•Pelvic floor – ask to be checked internally if that feels appropriate and safe for you. Ask for specific guidance about pelvic floor exercise and describe the pain/discomfort you’re experiencing if you’re worried. Don’t suggest that everything is fine if it’s not. Now’s the time to speak up. If you ask to be referred to a women’s health physio now, it may be that due to waiting lists you wouldn’t get an appointment for a few weeks/months anyway, so bear this in mind if the doctor suggests it’s ‘too soon’ to see a physio and tells you to come back in a few weeks. Ask to be referred now. It’s too easy to postpone this and just hope things will get better in time. Tending to your new baby, it can feel like this actually isn’t that important, but it is. You are important too. Pelvic floor issues don’t magically get better on their own.

•Diastasis recti – ask to have your abdominals checked. In my experience, it may not be mentioned unless you bring it up, and even then your GP may look nonplussed. If your GP dismisses you, or doesn’t seem to know what you’re asking, don’t be deterred. Don’t allow anyone to suggest that this is ‘just’ a mum issue that is ‘normal’ and you have to put up with. Ask to be referred to a women’s health physio, or get yourself independently to one, or to a postnatal-qualified Pilates trainer so they can check you. Do not be fobbed off. This is so important and sadly not something that GPs yet have enough awareness of or time to promote robustly.

It takes six weeks just for your uterus to settle and the blood supply to regulate back to pre-birth levels. Your body will only just have started to assemble itself into its pre-baby organisation at a cellular level. Your connective tissue needs to reconnect. It can take months and months for your hormones to balance to pre-pregnancy levels. If you’ve had a Caesarean or a birth with intervention, there will be multiple layers of invisible tissue healing going on, which require lengthy rehabilitation and ample rest. Giving birth is a huge event. Don’t belittle it by assuming that after six weeks you are ‘back to normal’.

If you experienced a traumatic birth and you’ve been left feeling shaky, panicky and anxious, crying a lot or experiencing flashbacks, don’t ignore these feelings as they may be a sign of birth trauma or Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which is increasingly recognised as a condition related to birth. You can request a Birth Debrief: an opportunity to go through your birthing notes with a consultant midwife, at a time that feels right for you. This should be offered as a matter of course by your hospital, particularly if you’ve had an emergency Caesarean or other surgery, but if not, request it. If your baby is particularly fretful and hard to settle for prolonged periods, remember they have also been through a very traumatic physical event. It might be worth visiting a cranial osteopath who can release and soothe any physical discomfort that your baby might be experiencing post birth. My first (very colicky and distressed) baby benefited hugely from cranial osteopathy, so it’s worth trying. Details in the Resources.

Your uterus contracts back to its original size in the days after giving birth, which is painful – similar to early labour contractions. This is stimulated particularly by breastfeeding, and it’s more intense if it’s not your first baby. Establishing breastfeeding is hard, mentally and physically, and is painful initially even if your baby takes to it easily, despite what your health visitor might suggest. You’re also very hormonal, so you’ll be feeling tender and emotional.

Breathing techniques are so valuable for getting you through these intense early days. If it’s your second or subsequent baby, you might be less hit by the enormity of the physical challenge, but you have the added emotional challenge of introducing your new baby into your household of other children and changing the status quo, possibly dealing with demands from your firstborn to ‘give the baby back now, we’re not keeping him’ (true story). All of this brings with it lots of joy but also it’s very normal to feel overwhelmed with all the upheaval. So, revisit deep breathing exercises to soothe your nervous system, every day.

Pelvic floor awareness exercises are suitable from 24 hours after your birth, whenever you feel ready. Breathing exercises are particularly useful for the first days and weeks after you’ve had your baby, to relax and soothe your body and soul and to stimulate your circulation and therefore your healing: Legs Up the Wall and Pelvic Floor: Pubic Bone Breathing are especially beneficial. The exercises in this chapter can safely be performed as soon as you feel comfortable – please check with your GP if you have any concerns. Please also wait until 8–12 weeks after Caesarean or vaginal birth with surgical intervention. Gentle, supported rotation and stability exercises such as Chalk Circles and Side-lying Ball Roll can be performed in the initial six-week period as long as you feel well enough.

Birth injuries are no party. You may be told that what you’ve experienced is ‘just a graze’, but promise me that you’ll speak up if you’re still in pain months (or even years) later. Scar tissue build-up can affect how tears heal, impact on your pelvic floor function, and can mean that sex is painful. Women tend to feel shy and nervous about coming forward with these issues. Apparently the average time a woman takes to go to her GP with pelvic floor issues is seven years. Seven years. Don’t suffer in silence.

•First degree – This involves the skin of the perineum and the back of the vagina. These tears are often so small they don’t need stitching; in fact they heal better naturally.

•Second degree – The skin and back of the vagina, plus the muscles of the perineum are torn. It needs to be stitched, usually by the midwife.

•Third degree – This involves the skin, back of the vagina, muscles of the perineum and extends partially or completely through the anal sphincter. Stitches are needed to close these tears, usually performed by a surgeon rather than the midwife.

•Fourth degree – This is the same as the third-degree tear, but extends into the rectum. Surgery is needed.

•Natural perineal stretching being impeded for some reason: pushing too intensely without the expulsive reflex, for example.

It can take up to a month for tears to heal and for stitches to dissolve (small tears with no stitches usually heal faster). In that time you’ll probably be in some pain, so make sure you take painkillers if you need to, and breathe deeply. Having an episiotomy or suffering a tear carries the risk of scarring, so at a time that feels right for you, when the area is no longer tender, internal self-massage is a way of stimulating the healing process and breaking down the scar tissue, making sure there is minimal effect on your pelvic floor sensation in the long term.

Bathing in warm water and/or using a cushion can help (a special inflatable cushion can make sitting down more comfortable, or roll up two towels and place them under your thighs, which will take the pressure off the perineum).

If you’re still uncomfortable after a few weeks, make sure you speak to your midwife, health visitor or GP.

•Keep the cut/tear and surrounding area clean – just use water, no soap products.

•After going to the toilet, pour a jug of warm water over your perineum to rinse it.

•Going for a wee can be painful: it might help if you pee in the bath (just before getting out), or in a warm shower. Take a cup of warm water with you to the toilet and flush over the area straight afterwards to prevent the sting.

•You might be scared to poo because you’re worried about pressure on the stitches. This fear causes a lot of extra discomfort and emotional distress. You can ask your midwife, GP or health visitor about medication to help you poo more easily, but deep breathing should be employed first and foremost. One tip for alleviating pressure on the pelvic floor and avoiding straining is to create a ‘squatty potty’ by lifting your feet up when sitting on the loo – a toddler step is ideal so even if this is your first baby invest in one now (as you will need it later anyway). Elevating the feet changes the angle of the pelvis, which alters the pressure down into your pelvic floor and can make all the difference when pooing to avoid straining, which can really help prevent or exacerbate prolapse.

•After having a poo, make sure you carefully wipe front to back, away from your vagina, to keep the stitches clean.

•Wrap an ice pack or ice cubes in a towel or cloth soaked in diluted tea tree/lavender/witch hazel oil and place on to the affected area, to relieve the pain. You could also soak a sanitary towel with this diluted solution and keep it in the freezer, then place it in your knickers. Or you can now buy ready-made sprays that contain soothing and healing ingredients, such as Spritz for Bitz – which can also be used for Caesarean wound healing (and for your baby’s nappy rash).

•Restart pelvic floor awareness exercises as soon as you can after birth. They enhance blood circulation and aid the healing process.

Although you might not think it’s appropriate if you’re sore and tired, pelvic floor awareness ‘exercises’ can and should start around 24 hours after birth, even if you had a Caesarean birth. If you’ve had stitches, don’t be scared about disturbing them – actually the opposite is true. Trauma to the pelvic floor can begin to heal if you encourage blood circulation to the area, which will help to reduce swelling. All of the pelvic floor exercises included are appropriate here.

As your healing progresses and you become more mobile, start to exercise your pelvic floor in different positions: lying down, sitting, standing. Think about your pelvic floor and connecting to your centre in your regular daily activities, which is when you most need them: when you’re standing up from sitting, picking your baby up, pushing your baby’s buggy, carrying shopping while putting your baby in the car seat, etc.

We need to start viewing birth injury as just that, injury. Injured muscle doesn’t reactivate without conscious attention and rehab. A professional footballer wouldn’t go back onto the pitch having torn her hamstring before having extensive physio to heal properly. We need to view a torn pelvic floor with the same mentality.

Tip

For Caesarean post-birth care tips – see the next chapter. If you had a vaginal birth with surgical intervention, a lot of the Caesarean chapter applies to you as well. Surgery, even if not under emotionally traumatic circumstances, is trauma for your body, and there are implications for the length of your healing when incisions and stitches are involved.

This is a technique created by the pelvic physiotherapist Maeve Whelan, whose details you can find in the Resources, as a way of developing your ability to relax your pelvic floor.

1.Start in Relaxation Position, or you can also do this sitting down – or standing. Play around with pelvic floor awareness exercises in all positions, ultimately.

•Stay on the in-breath for three seconds, keeping the stomach soft. Practise this for a few breaths.

•Allow your in-breath to be longer than your out-breath. Your out-breath should almost disappear: this means you’ve let all your tension go.

•Your out-breath should sound like a dynamic sigh: ‘hah’, as if you’re cleaning your glasses.

•Allow your stomach to soften into your fingertips placed under your ribs on your upper abdomen.

•When your abdomen is soft and filling out as the diaphragm descends, you can then expect to feel a connection to the pelvic floor as it too lets go – the DROP.

THE LESS EFFORT, THE BETTER – imagine going into a state of complete relaxation and almost meditation.

Imagine that your pelvic floor is a lift in a building. We have ground floor (your pelvic floor at rest), levels one, two and three. There is also a basement floor below ground floor.

•Sit on a chair, feet hip-width apart. You could also do this while lying in Relaxation Position.

•Breathe out, connect to your centre, visualise closing the lift doors. Imagine the sit bones drawing towards each other (without clenching your buttocks).

•Breathe out and take the lift up to the top floor, as far as you can without bracing.

•When you reach the ground floor, soften your muscles fully to lower to the basement floor. ‘Open the doors’ of the lift and release your pelvic floor muscles completely.

CASE STUDY

Julie, mum of three

Postnatally, I found it hard to find my pelvic floor again, never mind strengthen it. Pilates really helped that.

The pelvic floor has to be strong for endurance. But it also has to have the power for short bursts of strength. This exercise develops the ‘fast-twitch’ muscle fibres, which are responsible for those shorter bursts of movement and energy. For example, chicken wings contain lots of fast-twitch fibres, enabling the chicken to take flight if they get scared – fast-twitch fibres are quick to respond, but also fatigue after a short burst of energy.

The pelvic floor needs both stamina and speed: it needs the fast-twitch capability for rapid response when you cough, laugh, sneeze or jump around, as well as needing stamina and marathon endurance when your baby is making her descent out into the world. In the postnatal period, stress incontinence is a common issue. If your rapid response team isn’t mobilised soon enough, sneezing or coughing can lead to embarrassing leaks. This exercise is a good training drill to prepare your pelvic floor team for those ‘emergencies’ that require strength without a moment to lose!

Once you’ve got it, practise this in a number of different positions: standing, sitting, lying. This will help create the muscle memory (and the habit) for it to be more effective in your daily life.

•Release and breathe in deeply into your belly, imagining your diaphragm taking up space within your centre.

We’re conditioned to hold our bellies in – we suck our tummies in tight and hold our breath, ‘to look better’. Holding your tummy leads to a lot of pressure within the abdomen – intra-abdominal pressure – temporarily squishing your internal organs and increasing the load on your pelvic floor, rather than creating any useful strength or muscle balance.

This exercise allows you to connect to your belly through your breath, release your diaphragm fully and relax all of the muscles around your abdomen and your pelvic floor. You may have noticed that newborns naturally breathe this way: when a baby takes in a breath its belly inflates hugely like a balloon, then releases back with its in-breath. We need to learn from the newborn’s pure instinctive breath.

•Start lying on your back, head on a small cushion, knees bent, arms relaxed with hands on the belly, fingertips resting towards your pubic bone. Release your weight into the floor. Feel the heaviness of your head, ribcage, pelvis.

•Bring your awareness to your breath. Notice the in-breath, the out-breath, the space in between.

•Breathe in through the nose for a count of seven, then sigh out through the mouth for a count of 11. Imagine you’re fogging a window in front of you.

•Bring your awareness to your tummy and pelvis, the sensation of your fingertips on your pubic bone.

•Breathe in and imagine sending your breath towards your pubic bone, down through the torso, the ribcage opens and the belly inflates with the breath.

•See whether you can channel your breath deep down towards the belly and pelvis, imagine it like a soft wave travelling down the body and washing away any tension.

•On the out-breath, feel your tummy soften and imagine the pelvis wide and open, and completely relaxed.

•Practise releasing the jaw by changing the sounds of your out-breath. Experiment with a ‘haaaaaah’ sound, a long audible sigh.

This is to challenge the deep activation of your abdominals and work into the hip muscles. We need to keep the pelvis stable while the legs move.

•Breathe in to lengthen and prepare. As you breathe out, slide your right leg out behind you, keeping the foot in contact with the ground.

Watchpoints

Imagine you have a mirror in front of you on the mat to check if you’re ‘swinging’ your torso or hips to the side of your sliding leg. If you are, or if your hips have to ‘shift’ to bring the knee back underneath you, you’re not working your deep core. Try to maintain stability with the torso centred.

If you’re recruiting your muscles correctly, the leg will glide in and out with no visible effect on the torso. Think length from head to tail, long waist on each side.

This exercise can be performed with a band, or without (which requires a bit more control). It improves the circulation in your lower body, in the pelvis and your legs.

•Start in Relaxation Position. Float one knee in towards you (Single Knee Folds) and place a stretchy band around the back of your thigh. Hold the ends of the band in one hand and release your elbows to the floor.

•Circle the thighbone clockwise, slowly. Imagine stirring the leg in its socket like a cocktail stick in a glass. Keep the movement in the thighbone and not leading with the knee or the foot. Try to maintain heaviness in the pelvis, moving the thighbone without rotating in the spine or moving the bottom on the floor.

•You can also create infinity circles, figures-of-eight, to really oil the hip joint.

Watchpoint

Check in with your alignment: shoulders heavy, waist long, pelvis relaxed and grounded.

This is great for encouraging circulation to the hip and pelvic area, which can be prone to stiffness in the early postnatal period.

•As you breathe out, send the thighs to the left with control, allowing them to separate and move independently from each other. Breathe in to the hip joints and allow the stretch to open there.

•Breathe out to move to the other side. The hip movement will travel into a rotation of the pelvis and lumbar spine.

•Enjoy the stretch of the waist and hip, while keeping the shoulders heavy and open.

Rest is incredibly important for milk production, so particularly if you’ve had a challenging birth experience, prioritise lots of time for simply breathing and lying down. This is not wasted time, it’s so valuable and necessary. Imagine trying to use your phone when the battery has run out – and then see yourself as requiring recharging in exactly the same way. Once you’re ready, there is no research to suggest that gentle exercise has a negative effect on your breastmilk supply. However, it’s often devilishly uncomfortable to lie on your front with the two tender, rock-hard milk-making orbs on your front, which means that you may not feel comfortable performing exercises on your front, or even some Four-point Kneeling exercises. Take care, don’t lie on your front if your boobs are sore, and only do as many repetitions as feel comfortable for you – and don’t tire yourself out. Make sure you drink enough water – breastfeeding is thirsty work – so have a glass of water at least every time you feed.

It’s a good idea to feed baby before you do any Pilates. If your boobs are full, chances are they’ll feel uncomfortable, and any amount of movement may stimulate your milk, so it’s advisable to wear breast pads to avoid too much leakage. Although to be honest, you’ll be so used to leaking after a while that you won’t really mind.

You might want to keep the range of movement of some arm exercises smaller and controlled. Anything that involves reaching your arms over your head or stretching away from the body, such as with Chalk Circles or Shoulder Stretch (see here and here), might cause tenderness early on.

Forward leaning when feeding your baby constantly can literally become a pain in the neck. In some ways, aches and pains are inevitable as a new mum, but being mindful of your posture will go some way to avoiding the worst of it, and more importantly, ensure that you’re not entrenching pain into your body for the long term.

When you’re feeding, particularly when breastfeeding but this is also relevant if you’re bottle feeding, bring your baby up to you rather than hunching forwards for your boob to reach your baby’s mouth. Prop baby or your elbow up with enough pillows and cushions, to support his body closer to your own without strain. Always remember to bring baby to boob, rather than lowering your boob to baby.

Notice what kind of position you adopt when you’re feeding. Often, we’re crouched and distorted, balancing on our toes with a crick neck, to ensure that our baby is happy and comfortable – mother yourself a bit. Bolster your back and arm with pillows, make sure you have a footrest if you need it, and stretch out your body afterwards, even just very briefly, by doing a Shoulder Stretch and the following Neck Stretch. You’ll avoid longer-term neck, lower back and foot issues by taking a moment to consider your own comfort.

•Take a long, deep breath in and sigh the breath out through your lips, as if you’re fogging a window in front of you. Relax your jaw and soften your face.

•Sitting upright, nod your left ear down to your left shoulder, looking forwards.

•Raise your hand to the side of your head and place a gentle pressure to increase the stretch. Return slowly to centre, then repeat to the right.

The next few exercises are perfect for relaxing and releasing tension at the end (or middle!) of a mothering day. Pick just one for a micro meditation moment, or, do all five together and it should only take 10 minutes of your evening (feel free to linger for longer).

•Take your hands around the front of your knee and draw that knee deeper in towards your body.

•At the same time, lengthen the other leg away along the floor. Feel the front of the hip open and release.

•With the opposite arm, take hold of your knee and guide it across towards the floor, twisting the hips. Extend your other arm out along the floor at shoulder height and look towards the palm of your hand.

•As you breathe into the rotation and gently stretch into your spine and hips, travel the resting arm up above your head, maintaining contact with the floor. Then, reach the arm out and down to the hip, as if drawing a snow angel. Repeat 3 or 4 times as you breathe deeply.

•Carefully, with control, float the left knee in towards you and hold on behind the thigh. Feel the stretch in the right side of your bottom.

•Breathe into this stretch, lengthening your tailbone away from you, softening your shoulders and head into the mat.

This is such a therapeutic position to be in postnatally. If you do nothing else, take a moment out of your day to lie on your back, breathing long and deeply, allowing the back of your body to release and open, and letting go of any tension you are holding on to around your shoulders, pelvis and inner thighs. Take care if you’ve had PGP and avoid if any pelvic pain lingers.

•From Relaxation Position, fold one knee followed by the other in to your chest.

•Connect the insides of the feet and reach your arms through the centre of your thighs to hold on to your shin/ankles.

This exercise massages the muscles between your shoulder blades, releasing stiffness and tension. It stimulates the natural pelvic floor response and gently reawakens natural movement in the upper back.

•Lie on your side, with your bottom arm lengthened underneath your head and knees bent, feet in line with your bottom. Place your top arm outstretched in front of you, at shoulder height. Rest your palm on top of a small ball.

•Breathe out as you roll the ball forwards and away from you, allowing your ribcage to roll forwards to follow your arm. Keep your pelvis upright.

•Breathe in and roll the ball back towards you, moving from the shoulder blade without bending the arm or wrist.

Watchpoint

Keep the arm straight as you draw the ball back in towards you. It should be a movement of the shoulder blade on the ribcage, not in the elbow and wrist.

This is a gentle way of activating your deep pelvic floor and abdominal muscles. It’s perfect for an easy way of tuning into your pelvic floor and healing diastasis recti, as you may be sitting on the floor a lot with your baby at this time. It’s also great if you’re spending a lot of time feeding: you can adapt it for sitting on the sofa, to be aware of your sitting posture and wake up your spine.

•Sitting tall on your sit bones, lengthen your legs out in front of you at hip-width apart, then bend your knees to take your feet flat on the floor. Breathe in to lengthen into the spine, and take your hands behind your thighs.

•Breathe out, and feel the pelvic floor lift. Place some pressure into your hands as you tuck your tailbone underneath you and curl your spine into a C-curve, evenly rolling through each bone and curling your chin towards your chest lightly – imagine soft length in your neck.

•If you feel strong enough and can do this without abdominal doming, from here lengthen this C-shape back, lowering your hands slightly and deepening your connection with the lower abdominals to support your weight. The energy should be coming from your pelvic floor and deep abdominals, not from your hips gripping. Breathe in to lengthen into this position.

•Breathe in to lengthen back into neutral, fully releasing your pelvic floor engagement, then open your heart centre to extend into the upper spine. Keep the neck long, without too much extension into the neck.

This is a restorative position, a place to practise some deep breathing and release the tension of the day, from your muscles and your mind.

•Bring your mat towards the wall. Sit facing to the side, with your hips close to the wall. Rotate your legs towards the wall as you descend on to the mat. Ease yourself down on to your side, then roll on to your back. Have a pillow/s underneath your head and torso if you need to. Float your legs in and rest them against the wall, softly bent. Place your hands on your tummy, or on the floor.

Tip

You can take ‘legs over the sofa’ instead if your hamstrings are particularly tight: lie on your floor and drape your legs over the sofa, knees bent.

These routines are perfect for doing with your baby next to you or underneath you in Four-point Kneeling. You are able to have eye contact throughout each movement and press down to give your baby a kiss, while continuing to focus on your movement and breath. Remember that you are enabling their development by having them by your side so please don’t feel guilty about exercising with them: this is 5-star entertainment for them! Gazing at mama is deeply stimulating for your baby. What’s more, simply by moving with them you enhance their muscular development, coordination and motor skills, and deepen your attachment and bond.

5-minute workout
Relaxation: Pelvic Floor: Pubic Bone Breathing
Pelvic Tilts
Hip Rolls
Hip Flexor Stretch
Centring in Four-point Kneeling

10-minute workout
Relaxation Position
Sniff, Flop, Drop
Pelvic Floor: Lift and Pulse
Compass
Knee Drops
Hip Rolls
Ribcage Closure
Cat–Cow

20-minute workout
Scarf Breathing
Roll-downs Against the Wall
Wall Posture Check and Side Reach
Shoulder Stretch
Relaxation Position: Pelvic Floor Lift and Pulse
Spine Curls
Band Pull with Knee Drop
Leg Slides
Windscreen Wiper Legs
Glute Stretch
Cat–Cow
Chalk Circles
Legs Up the Wall