Beth’s positive birth story

I joined pregnancy yoga as I was very active before pregnancy, and I wanted to keep being active but in a sensible way. I had never tried yoga before, but was always wanted to, so I thought it be perfect timing. Little did I know how beneficial it was during my pregnancy and labour!

Pregnancy yoga helped me in many different ways. It helped during my hardest times mentally and, towards the end, physically. As you near the end of pregnancy, everything starts to hurt in many different ways and doing yoga really helped release all of those aches and pains. During labour, the breathing techniques really help you focus through the pain, which was very important.

I was induced at 41 weeks due to having a two-vessel cord. This wasn’t the birth I was hoping for, but nevertheless, I still embraced it as much as I could.

Techniques from yoga were extremely helpful during the early stages of my contractions. My waters broke at roughly 11:00am on Monday 22nd December, but they had meconium in, so I was closely monitored in the labour ward. But my labour was long, and I opted for an epidural. My son was born some 19 hours later on Tuesday 23rd December at 6:03am.