Your lifestyle really impacts your baby’s position ready for birth. Lockdown life has meant that many people are more sedentary than ever & for pregnant people, this has meant that opportunities for babies to find optimal positions for birth are far less. While all positions a baby chooses are a variation of normal, we know that finding alignment with your baby really benefits physiological birth.
By using your posture, gravity & opening your pelvis your baby is far more likely to choose a head down position ready for birth. Here are some simple changes to encourage optimal positioning, for an optimal birth!
Sofa slumping - Pregnancy is tiring and can be uncomfortable, so who can blame you for wanting to melt into the couch at every opportunity!? Well I’m afraid to say, sofa slumping is out if you want to help your baby get head down! Use cushions to support your back so you’re sat upright with a long spine and ever so slightly inclined
Swap out your office chair for a birthing ball. Make sure your hips are higher than your knees when sat on the ball and you’ll be giving your baby so much space and opportunity to move head down. Sitting on a birth ball opens the pelvis and means that gravity is drawing the heaviest part of your baby down toward the ground
Yoga is brilliant for helping to turn a breech baby to a cephalic position, and for balancing your pelvis ready for birth. Due to all of the birth prep movements, you offer space in the pelvis and use movements that encourage baby into it too. Any sort of exercise is great for encouraging optimal positioning, but yoga is particularly brilliant due to the nature of the movements.
Be aware of how you sit in the car / at the dinner table / on the train. The rounding of the spine is what we want to avoid. Take a travel cushion for your back and try to take regular walks if you can between long stints of sitting.
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