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Chorus & Clouds Blog

Healing the Postpartum Body with Jen from The Mama Method

Healing the Postpartum Body with Jen from The Mama Method

Jen from The Mama Method, a Pilates fitness studio specializing in prenatal, postpartum + women’s health, was at the Nook Nov. 15th speaking about the postpartum body and how we can help it heal. 

You may be surprised to know that it actually takes you body 7 years to completely recover from pregnancy and childbirth, whether vaginal birth or C-section. At a 6 week check up, a lot of times, your medical professional will look at your stitches, ask what kind of birth control you want, check on your "mood" and consider you "good to go" and that's kind of where our care ends. We are given so much information about how to care for our babies, but no one teaches us about what we need to heal and to thrive.

A lot of Jen's focus is to work with people prenatally, to educate them for what is to  come and to get their body prepared for the demands that are coming post partum. She also, works with people post partum. There is a misconception that postpartum is only the first month or two after birth, but it's actually kind of a forever thing - we are forever changed.

For the first 6 weeks, you are still healing! You are not actually ready to return to regular exercise at that point. You will often have some leaking during exercise for up to the first 6 months after birth. The same for an abdominal muscle separation or Diastasis recti. Every women has this after birth, but if you don't notice that it's going away after the 8-10 week mark, then it won't go away without some breath work and care to help it close back up. Our core and abdominal wall are still healing for up to two years postpartum. Our core is actually several layers.

Jen describes the core muscles with a cake pop analogy:

  • You want to start with the foundation - the stick- think of that as your spine.
  • Our deep core muscles and pelvic floor muscles are the cake wrapped around it.
  • The last layer of icing is the outer core - the 6 pack muscles and obliques. They're important, but they can't be all that we address.

Our breathing is part of our deep abdominal system. As we go through pregnancy our breathing becomes more shallow as our ribs expand outwardly to the sides. Jen led the attendees through some simple breath work designed to deepen their breathing by focusing on expanding their ribs outward to the sides as they inhaled and on some simple, but important Kegel and abdominal exercises. Jen also spoke about the importance of strengthening your core back muscles, as your back and abdominals work in concert to maintain your core stability. When you are exercising, it is important to be aware of your posture and form so you are using your muscles correctly as you exercise.

My final question for Jen: What do you wish people knew before they went home with their baby?

Jen's answer: Rest and eat really nourishing food. Our tissues cannot heal if we're not eating well. It won't help our hormones or cortisol levels. For the first 6 weeks don't even worry about exercise, focus on resting, eating nourishing foods every 3 hours and getting support. Bone broths, soups and stews provide the collagen we need for our tissues to heal. If you try to get there faster through early exercise it will likely actually set you back! 

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Building Your Child's Toy Library - Stage by Stage

Building Your Child's Toy Library - Stage by Stage
One of the wonderful benefits to having our own learning studio is that we get to test drive our toys and quickly determine which ones have the longevity and encourage the exploration, learning and creativity that we're hoping to provide. Continue reading

What Is A Prepared Environment?

What Is A Prepared Environment?
By arranging the materials or toys in a thoughtful way, imagining them from your child's perspective, you can create an environment that will stimulate learning and creativity. Continue reading

Top 10 Tips To Help Your Baby Sleep Over the Holidays - with Sasha Kern

Top 10 Tips To Help Your Baby Sleep Over the Holidays - with Sasha Kern

This week at The Nook, our resident sleep consultant, Sasha Kern from BlissfulBabySleep. Before she had her own children, Sasha was a postpartum doula, often helping new families at night. She has had over 20 years experience helping babies sleep and has seen sleep recommendations change over the years. Her depth of experience allows her to offer help tailored to a family's particular sleep challenges.

She has returned to Chorus and Clouds with tips to help your baby (and you!) get better sleep over the holidays.

The holiday season is a wonderful time and magical with a new baby, however, with all the fun and special moments come a shake up of your usual routine and whether baby is sleeping and napping on a schedule or not there are unexpected changes that can throw things off.

Sasha gives her top tips to keep things calm and easy:

 Tip #1: Use black out curtains and white noise at home and then you can recreate their home sleep environment wherever you go.

Tip #2: Maintain your bedtime routine when you're away (bath, story, songs - whatever you do) this will cue your baby that it's time for bed.

Tip #3: Grandparents and friends will want your baby to stay up late to spend time with them, but hold your ground! If they want to spend the time with baby, then have them do part or all of the bedtime routine and spend time together that way.

Tip #4: If your out and can't get home at bedtime bring pajamas and put baby to sleep at a restaurant or a friend's house. Walking with them in a carrier may help them fall asleep more easily.

Tip #5: If your baby is walking don't let them know they can walk in the aisle of the plane!

Tip #6: Time Changes: With a 3 hour time change or less just jump into the new time zone, preferably start the new time while you're on the plane. Luckily, planes have lots of white noise!

Tip #7: With a longer time change start the adjustment on the plane. If you're travelling at night, but it would be daytime in the new time zone, instead of letting them sleep through the night treat the sleep as naps, as you would in the new time. At night, if they wake up thinking it should be daytime, keep it as boring as possible.

Tip #8: During the day get out in the sunshine as much as possible.

Tip #9: When you're coming back do the same thing.

Tip #10: Car rides: Leave first thing in the morning when they're rested. Time your stops with feeds and then time long stretches of driving with naps.

 

For Sasha's sleep fundamentals please visit this blog post from an earlier visit or contact her via her website BlissfulBabySleep.

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Play Therapy and Learning Through Play with Anna Bardi

Play Therapy and Learning Through Play with Anna Bardi
In order to learn something through memorization it takes about 400 repetitions to create a synapse in our brain, but if we do it through play it takes only 10-20. Continue reading

Claiming More of Ourselves in Motherhood with Cayley Benjamin

Claiming More of Ourselves in Motherhood with Cayley Benjamin

Cayley is a regular guest at The Nook and you can read a full blog post from an earlier visit here. Today she offers two quick, but meaningful ideas on how we can claim more of ourselves in our experience of motherhood.

What came up strongly for many of the mothers present was the ever present guilt they felt at taking any time for themselves - at even acknowledging that motherhood is hard, all-encompassing and even suffocating at times. In expressing these feelings they were almost always met with comments like, "But it goes so fast. Just enjoy it!" so that we almost always reflexively add "but, of course, I love it!" to balance or almost negate those difficult and often contradictory feelings. That you can love being a mother, love your child and really NOT love some parts of the experience.

The reflection Cayley offers is what if when we said, "This is really hard...this was a really tough day," we stopped feeling the need to add, "but, I love it....but it's wonderful, of course!" How would start to change the culture of motherhood?

One of the things Cayley believes in, when it comes to caring for ourselves as mothers, is that we can add it in, rather than add on.

Self-care is often thought of or spoken of as time away from our kids and she thinks that is important, but she also thinks it's important to claim ourself within our experience of motherhood, when we're with our children. 

Think about ways you can integrate things that you love into your daily experience of motherhood.

Some of Cayley's examples:

  • I play the music I want, sometimes
  • I went through a phase when I made my lunch first, then I made my son's lunch and I had at least a little bit of my food before I gave him his
  • I make the lunch I want
  • I light a candle everyday and a diffuser with really nice essential oils - just for me

Mothers brainstormed their own examples - everything from dancing to having a piece of chocolate - of how they could inject little bursts of joy into their day.

What will yours be?

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Sarah Adams Talks Montessori at Home

Sarah Adams Talks Montessori at Home
Sarah dispels the myth that a Montessori home is supposed to duplicate a Montessori preschool, while getting to some of the core premises of the Montessori philosophy and how parents can bring those values and practices into their home. Continue reading

Travel Sleep Tips from Sasha

Travel Sleep Tips from Sasha
The bedtime routine eg. bath, change, book, song, etc. is so important because this is how the baby gets their cues that it's time to wind down and sleep for a long stretch. When they are older toddlers and children, these cues are going to make it much easier to settle down and sleep in a different situations because the routine can be the same. Continue reading

Play in the Early Years with Shauna Farrell

Play in the Early Years with Shauna Farrell

When we observe our children's play and allow them to lead their exploration and discoveries we are giving them the opportunity to foster their own learning at exactly the right time and stage for them. In turn, this experience will give them the intrinsic motivation and confidence to be lifelong learners.

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