Stretch and breathe

With lots of bank holidays this time of year the class is off and on , tomorrow we are On 😁come join me at 6.30pm St Denys church centre for some mum and baby time x

The weekend papers and news feeds are again filled with stories designed to fill us with fear about birth.

Sadly, it's a regular thing. No matter whether they're on the web, in the papers or on TV, these stories are written to be scary and focused on risk. They are designed to instill fear and undermine women’s confidence in their own bodies and babies.

Here are a few things that you should bear in mind when reading these headlines and the associated stories.

1. Both the originator of the research and the people who turn it into a story want to get the headline and the story to spread as far and wide as possible. Their job isn't to help you make an informed decision about what is right for you.

2. The goal of getting maximum publicity for a research finding or story is sometimes achieved by taking a sensationalist stance. Key facts may be glossed over, shared in a misleading way or left out completely.

3. Risk and fear sell news very quickly. There are many, many studies showing that birth is safe and that women's bodies are marvellously good at growing, birthing and feeding babies. But these don't make exciting headlines, and they don't make nearly as many people read, click and share. So they are often ignored.

4. There is almost never any discussion of the bigger picture or the wider context, either of the study or situation itself or of other work that has been done on the same topic. We need more information than can be found in the headlines.

5. In reality, research and report findings are never certain. All studies have limitations. Sadly, the complexity and the uncertainty gets compromised in favour of those risk-filled headlines which make you want to click, read and share.

Stay calm.

Remember that the job of the media is to sell headlines, not to help people making pregnancy and birth decisions.

Breathe.

Get informed.

And then make the decision that's right for you.

If you'd like to see more of my work on this topic, you can find me at www.sarawickham.com/wrfm



Photo credit .kraft

A systematic review and meta-analysis has examined the characteristics and effectiveness of pregnancy yoga interventions.

“Twenty-nine studies with 2217 pregnant women were included for meta-analysis.

Pregnancy yoga interventions reduced anxiety, depression and perceived stress.

Yoga interventions also reduced duration of labour and, increased odds of normal vaginal birth and tolerance for pain.

The quality of evidence (GRADE criteria) was low to very low for all outcomes.

Twelve or more yoga sessions delivered weekly/bi-weekly had a statistically significant impact on mode of birth, while 12 or more yoga sessions of long duration (> 60 min) had a statistically significant impact on perceived stress.”

The researchers concluded that, “The evidence highlights positive effects of pregnancy yoga on anxiety, depression, perceived stress, mode of birth and duration of labour.”

The reference for this study is: Corrigan L et al (2022). The characteristics and effectiveness of pregnancy yoga interventions: a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth 22(250).

You can read the full paper at https://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12884-022-04474-9

(We’ll link that in Sara’s stories today).

We share research for those who like to stay up-to-date with birth-related research and thinking. If you're a midwife, birth worker or pregnancy yoga teacher who would like to delve deeper into studies, get updated on what's new and become better at understanding research, join Dr Sara Wickham’s mailing list at www.sarawickham.com

Exciting news as of Monday 28th February Relax stretch and breathe Weekly wellness sessions for pregnancy will be back face to face at St Denys Church Centre for the first time in nearly two years.

The sessions will be from 6.30-7.45 pm and will include breath awareness and breathing for labour, visualisations, gentle stretches to ease out those pregnancy aches and pains and a lovely relaxation to end with.

It also gives you the opportunity to make some new friends and to ask any questions you may have about pregnancy and labour as I am also a fully qualified antenatal teacher with the National Childbirth trust and have been practising for 22 years.

For details on pricing email me at [email protected].

There isn’t a class this evening , but back to normal next Monday 😃

Happy new year !
If you are interested in joining in the relax stretch and breathe classes then please note these will continue online for the time being due to the rise in Covid infections, don’t let this put you off though ,you will still be able to learn the breathing for labour do some gentle effective stretching and sprawl on your own floor for a relaxation 👍

Classes have now finished until Jan and will be continuing on zoom for the time being , if you would like to join in then message me for details.

Merry Xmas

Yoga for pregnancy is still going strong on zoom Mondays 6.30-7.30pm 🧘‍♀️🧘‍♀️🧘‍♀️🧘‍♀️🧘‍♀️🧘

A reminder that researchers looking at the effectiveness of prenatal yoga on delivery outcomes undertook a meta-analysis with interesting results.

They, "identified that yoga improved vaginal delivery, decreased premature delivery and birth weight of newborns, shorten the labor duration." (Rong et al 2020).

A note about the birth weight finding before anyone asks. This doesn't mean that the babies were compromised or didn't grow well. The average weight of the babies in the yoga and non-yoga groups was within normal limits and the researchers seem to be suggesting that this might mean that women who did yoga in these studies had babies who were less likely to be affected by gestational diabetes, but this needs more research.

The authors concluded that, "Prenatal yoga is an effective complementary medicine to improve delivery outcomes and not to increase the risk of fetus, which is worth recommending to pregnant women."

Not all of the studies involved in this meta-analysis were of high quality, but it's great that this gives us some evidence and a better idea of what we need to look at in future research.

You can see the original research at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1744388119308503

We share research for those who like to stay up-to-date with birth-related research and thinking. If you're a midwife, birth worker or pregnancy yoga teacher who would like to delve deeper into studies, get updated on what's new and become better at understanding research, join Dr Sara Wickham for an online course. Details at https://app.ruzuku.com/courses/69379/about