Julie's Boggle

Queen Charlotte’s, the maternity hospital that we’re booked into, has a programme of 4 ante-natal sessions which I’ve dutifully signed up for. The first one, which I went to last week, was just for women, preferably around the 18-week mark, and was titled “Taking Care of Yourself”.

Our trainer for the two-hour session was a pretty young physiotherapist called Emma.

After a general ice-breaker where she got us comparing pregnancy notes with our neighbours, she had a go at getting the session off on a positive note, by canvassing the room in general for “things that we’re enjoying about being pregnant.”

Mmm. Lots of heavy thinking there. Turns out the enjoyment factor wasn’t that high for most of us. We eventually came up with ‘seeing the first scan’, ‘feeling movements’ (that one was from someone who was further along than most of the class), ‘telling our mothers/family/friends’ and ‘getting some common ground with people we wouldn’t ordinarily relate to’. Not a huge amount in it really.

Then came the list of pregnancy-related discomforts, and suddenly there was something for everyone. And about 5 additional items that we came up with that weren’t on Emma’s list! Looking round at the hands raised for the various complaints, it was good to feel one was not alone.

Aside from revising some rather specific biology, the main theme for the evening was learning useful exercises and ways of doing day-to-day things in such a way that we wouldn’t damage ourselves.

It seems that the hormone relaxin, which goes into overdrive during pregnancy, gives everything in the body just that little bit too much stretchability.

So while you can be incredibly flexible, the message is more that you wouldn’t want to be because it will still hurt later. And you have to be specially careful not to let it happen unconsciously. And you have to be even more careful once you’ve got a great big bump to tote around!

So we learned best practices for sitting, sleeping, turning over, standing up etc. etc. along with a whole list of good exercises to practise, and bad exercises to avoid (no more sit-ups!). All very instructive really. And good fun to exchange notes afterwards with other “expectees” with similar due dates who live nearby.