My daughter arrived 9 weeks ago. It felt like I had been hit by a train immediately afterwards, which – foolish as it may be – surprised me. For weeks afterwards, I felt horribly tired and weak. Anaemia didn’t help much but after about 5 weeks it felt like I turned a corner and I began to feel much better. By the time I had my ‘6 week check’ (at 7 weeks) I felt strong enough to start planning my first session. I knew that I needed to have all eventualities covered to give me reassurance when I went to my class that baby girl’s needs would be met and daddy would feel confident doing so. If any of the basics were to go wrong, I know that I would struggle to leave next time round so this was going to be key for me! Basically, i just wanted everybody to feel happy and calm.
Anyway, milk expressed, nappies stocked, baby asleep and handed over to dad, I was out the door and off to my local class with the lovely Sue, who also taught me whilst I was pregnant. This helped for two reasons. Firstly, Sue understood that I had a very new daughter so if my phone (on silent of course) rang, I’d be dashing out and secondly, she understood the physical state my body was in after having a baby. This is important. Yoga teachers naturally want to encourage their students, and if the postpartum body isn’t carefully considered, more harm can be done than good. Sue was going to look after me.
I was a bit nervous as the practice began. My mind was racing and racing, worrying about how dad and daughter were coping in my absence. It did feel great to be back but I had to keep reminding myself to take it slowly, that I wasn’t going to be as strong or flexible as before. Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t but my balance wasn’t half bad! It takes about 4 months for abdominals to fully knit back together so all direct ab work was off the cards. This means plank, low plank, boat pose all needed to be modified. As tempting as it was to plank, I recalled looking at my pregnant belly when I did this a five months ago and seeing that my abs had pretty much shrink-wrapped my growing baby. I knew that I would only cause my abs to separate if I rushed into this so carried this out on my knees, I didn’t even try to hold it in full. When it came to boat pose, I reclined slightly and kept my knees quite bent, again allowing my back muscles to do the work and my thighs. Instead, I focused on engaging all the other muscles around my core, in my legs and in my arms instead. It felt good. My pelvic floor was naturally still a little weak, and although I didn’t have any ‘new mummy accidents’, I did find that I had to focus on these muscles a little more than normal too.
Following my first session, my top tips are as follows:
- Preparation
– Give your partner reassurance that you can be contacted. This will keep both of you calm and settled.
– Make sure your phone is actually charged and has signal! - Practice
– Don’t be tempted to work your abs – they aren’t ready yet!
– Use the other parts of your core and legs to hold certain poses instead of your abs. This will be harder when it comes to balancing.
– Focus on you and you alone. It is totally irrelevant what the person next to you is doing, remember you’ve just had a baby!!
After an hour and fifteen minutes, I packed up my stuff, said good-bye and headed home. The house was still standing and both dad and baby were fine. It was straight into feeding and sleeping on mummy, but everyone was happy enough and I really felt like I had taken the first, healthy step to getting myself strong and fit once again. It felt good.
New Page Yoga 