Body, Birth and Movement

Many of you may have heard of the great Spinning Babies website.  I’m a big fan and recommend that all my birthing students check it out.  I’ve always found a lot of value in it, but more and more I’m beginning to wonder about how truly profound the information might be.  The more birth stories I hear, the more I wonder at the role of baby positioning and movement for long or difficult labors and rates of intervention.

get up and MOVE!

Many of us have also been hearing about the negative effects of all of our chair sitting and sedentary lives.  We sit in the car, we sit at our computers, we sit at work, we sit at school, we sit at the dinner table, we sit on the couch.  We sit on furniture and in chairs A LOT.  What does this do to our bodies?  Our bodies that are designed to bend, twist, squat, walk, climb and run?  Muscles that should be loose and flexible are rigid and hard.  Muscles that should be strong and active are weak and fragile.

My favorite biomechanist, Katy Bowman, has a lot to say on this subject.  Check out her books, videos, blog posts, podcasts.  She made me understand(well, mostly… it’s really complicated) the interplay of our body parts, how our lifestyle affects how we hold and position our bodies, and ultimately how we feel.  We probably shouldn’t be in as much pain as we are in. We should probably have a wider range of motion. We could be stronger and have more endurance.  In a lot of cases we just have to learn how to move in a more nutritious way.  And when our bodies are not in ideal positions, our babies’ might not be either.

What does this have to do with birth?

This becomes so obvious in the context of birth.  So many of us can’t even get into some of the positions that might help ease our contractions and lessen our time in labor, or we haven’t strengthened muscle groups that could give us more endurance in labor.  For example, some of us have big muscles like the Psoas (pronounced SO-AS) that are so rigid and contracted that it can act like a cage for the baby instead of a sling.  A healthy Psoas shouldn’t keep the baby from being able to turn and move down.  A shortened and tight Psoas can be a barrier to necessary movement.  There are things we can do for our bodies that might just improve our birth experiences.

So……

In addition to good nutrition, I think that working on our bodies before and during pregnancy can improve our chances for having a great birth more than just about anything else.

We need to lengthen and open the muscles that are holding baby in position so she has room to spin into just the right position for birth.  We have to strengthen the muscles that we need to hold us up in great laboring positions or to help push our babies out so we don’t get too tired.

HOW????

If you can take just a little bit of time to learn the basics of body positioning and strengthening, it’s actually pretty easy to build it into your day, and make these more nutritious positions and movements habit.  Making big changes here doesn’t require carving out big chunks of workout time, or traveling to a special location like a gym. Try some of these or make up your own!

• Change the way you sit and get up.  Engage your core muscles to help get up and sit up. Engage your glutes to get up from a chair. Hold the squat position for a few seconds as you’re getting up.
• Notice how you walk and what you wear on your feet and see if it needs some adjusting.
• Sit on the floor more.
• Squat low while you brush your teeth.
• When you’re in a chair, sit on the edge of your seat with your knees angled down and spread wide.
• Get a standing workstation or sit on an exercise ball at work instead of a chair.
• Hang from some monkey bars when you see them.
• Use the stairs in a very slow and deliberate way (even take them twice or skip a step).
• Hold a plank pose while you heat up your microwave popcorn.
• Think like a kid and climb something whenever you get a chance.
• Do some calf stretches or calf raises while you stand in line.
• Do spinal twists while sitting in traffic.
• Find opportunities to reach up and over or backwards (maybe for something on a high shelf).
• Do counter top pushups (instead of getting on the floor, put your hands on the edge of the counter top and angle your body away into a sort of 45 degree position) while you’re waiting for water to boil.
• Go for walks, especially on natural, uneven terrain.  Choose the hilly way.
• Be on hands and knees or in child’s pose while you watch your favorite show.

These are just a few of the things I have built into my life.  That’s right, plank pose=popcorn.   I have definitely noticed improvements.  There are so many ways to build these small adjustments into your life.  You will probably feel much better, and you might even be giving you and your baby a little more ease in birth.

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Joyful Beginnings