Birth prep will look different for everyone. It depends on what you were used to doing before you got pregnant, on your fitness levels and most importantly on how your pregnancy is going. Of course, if you feel sick most of your pregnancy, going for a run will be the last thing on your mind. And that’s fine! You have to listen to your body and do what’s BEST FOR YOU. So this article is just to give you an idea and to share my own experience. However, I believe the last weeks of my birth preparation could be useful to anyone, no matter how your pregnancy’s been going.
1st trimester
In the 1st trimester of my pregnancy I was feeling exhausted so I wasn’t able to do much except go to work and some walking. Towards the end I started feeling like myself again (luckily, cause at the beginning of the 2nd trimester we had our honeymoon planned to the Faroe Islands, so plenty of hiking ahead of us!). Then I came back to my usual activities and stuck to them throughout my pregnancy till the very end (except for running, I stopped running somewhere in the 8th month). I continued running, just adjusted the speed and reduced the mileage, continued swimming, body-weight exercising, yoga (with some adjustments again), walking daily, cycling to work…
Every now and then I took the time to connect to the baby. I just placed my hands onto my lower belly, mostly during yoga when appropriate, and focused on deep breaths all the way down to the belly. Or sometimes in the evening while watching TV, while resting in the garden, whenever an opportunity arose. However, it wasn’t easy to connect to my baby until I felt the first movements which for me was somewhere after 20 weeks into the pregnancy.
Halfway through
It was around this time, halfway through, when I started prepping myself for birth a bit more. I ordered an online course about hypnobirthing which we followed together with my husband. I started listening to a podcast hosted by a Swedish midwife that shares positive birth stories (The Positive Birth Story Podcast). There was no place for hearing bad experiences of others. I was aware about the risks that are always present, but I refused to let any negativity or fear influence my thoughts.
In the last trimester I tried to dedicate some time each day to yoga. I either followed some videos online or came up with my own routine to target specific areas of my body to prepare my body for labour. I also shot such sequence for you which you can find on my YT channel. Each day I listened to positive, hypnobirthing affirmations, usually lying down in the position of Reclined Butterfly. This pose works great on the opening of your hips, inner thighs and groin which are very important areas to keep open for labour. It wasn’t really time-consuming, it took 10 to 15 min a day.
If my day was especially busy and I couldn’t squeeze the affirmations in, I at least listened to them before going to sleep. We actually have no phones in the bedroom policy, but exceptional times require exceptional measures. 😁 I downloaded the affirmations on Spotify so I could listen offline and turn off the wifi before going to bed. Or I just had the affirmations on when I was doing the dishes/laundry.
Last 6 weeks – things are getting intense
It was for the last six weeks that my birth prep got really intense. 😀 Here’s my daily routine:
1 cup of raspberry leaf tea
6 dates – they are too sweet for me so I sometimes struggled with them, always paired them with some fat and protein in order to avoid blood sugar spike. If you want to know more about dates in pregnancy, I really like this article.
2 spoons flex seeds – freshly grounded, most of the times I grounded a batch for 2-3 days and stored it in the fridge. I was adding them to my yogurt, smoothie or just drank it with a glass of water. Gross but 🤷♀️.
I continued with daily yoga and affirmations
Every other day I did perineal massage (please tell me who came up with the idea to call it a “massage”)
From week 37 (last 4 weeks of pregnancy) I added:
One more cup of raspberry leaf tea (so 2x a day)
Aniball every other day, alternating with perineal massage
From week 39 I planned to do vaginal steaming, once a week, so in theory I was planning to do two before going into labour. Well, I managed to do only one as our baby girl decided to come a few days earlier. It was Saturday evening when I prepared my vaginal steaming and the labour started on Monday morning.
I am offering you my “Birth Prep Planner” from week 35 to download for free. I hope it will make your birth prep a bit easier, you’ll feel more confident and your body better prepared. 🤗
Are you curious to know how my birth story went in the end? Stay tuned, an article is coming out soon!
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