What. A. Week.

Five full days in the friendly home of an absolute wonder of a woman (and her doggy).

Pregnancy yoga training. It’s good to have, right? Keep your pregnant yogis safe. I’ll be honest, since I trained as a yoga teacher…

During the school holidays my usual Mum & Baby Yoga courses are suspended so that I can spend time with my own children. I wanted to do a one off session in the park to bring as many mums together as possible and…

Another week, another horror story about local postnatal exercise classes. This week it’s the online group course requiring women to practice burpees and star-jumps just 8 weeks after birth…

I have just been to my first pregnancy yoga session and am basking in the afterglow. Pregnancy yoga was one of my absolute favourite things about being pregnant with my eldest and it felt like the most positive and wholesome way for me to make time for myself and connect with my baby.

Feel like you’ve been kicked in the vagina? Tada! That’s pelvic girdle pain! Thanks pregnancy. On a positive note, “pelvic pain” can be sung to the tune of the 1990s hit single “Kiss the Rain” by Billie Myers when you are doing the washing up: “Pelvic pain? Whenever you need to pee. Pelvic pain, whenever you walk for too long; if you’re hips feel twingey and achy; pelvic pain.”

There isn’t much call to think about nipple cream before you have a baby, but advice from a friend on using the stuff before I had my first baby was some of the most helpful wisdom I received. During pregnancy, it can feel like there is so much to do, so much to buy, and so much to organise and it’s very easy to focus all your planning on the tiny human who hasn’t even arrived yet.

Top Tips for Breastfeeding Success.

Congratulations, you are pregnant! If you are one of the 81% of women who wants to breastfeed, I have tried to condense some key elements and practical ideas of things you can do to help you succeed.Skin to skin as soon as you can after birth You can usually do this no matter what kind of birth you have had- often doctors will let baby stay on your chest after a c-section while they are stitching you up. You can ask that the newborn checks be done a little later so you can enjoy your first golden hour uninterrupted. There are huge benefits of skin to skin including boosting your baby’s immunity, regulating temperature and respiration, creating a secure attachment as well as allowing the baby to initiate feeding. Watch a video of laid back breastfeeding to give you some inspiration

I took my first yoga class when I was 19 years old, but If you’d told me then that I’d be teaching yoga in my thirties I’d have struggled with the idea! My yoga journey has been a very subtle process of undoing, letting go and finding stillness, and it’s shaped my life profoundly. 

What I find most amazing about yoga is that it starts out, at least for me, as being this thing you do for an hour or so, once a week until, at some point, you start to feel something from your practice. I distinctly remember a moment in class when I experienced a feeling of inner space expanding between my shoulders, it felt really extraordinary at the time. For others it might be the feeling of relaxation, the quiet, the feeling of being present, the sense of well-being after class, or simply being able to touch your toes for the first time.