Core Strengthening for Pregnancy and Birth

Your core (abdominal and back muscles) needs to be stronger than ever in pregnancy in order to support the extra weight and allow your body to cope with being unbalanced. However, muscles that are too tightly wound won't give enough during childbirth and could lead to "stomach separation" (diastasis recti). This is not painful, though, as it is simply the connective tissue between the "six-pack" that separates in order to prevent the muscle tearing. The tissue gradually knits back together but it can take a long time.

I learnt a really simple core strengthening exercise at yoga that I actually resisted at first because it was too easy and I didn't believe it could. But it was the only exercise I was allowed to do with stomach separation following the birth and it was then when I had no strength in my stomach muscles that I could actually see it working to contract my uterus and the area around my lower belly.

It works on the transverse abdominal muscle group, which is the muscle that wraps around your belly and back and is important for supporting your back.

• Lie on your back with your feet flat on the ground and knees bent. Rest your hands on your belly so that you can feel the movement.
• Take a deep breath in and then breathe out, contracting your stomach muscles as you breathe out.
• Hold your stomach muscles in that position as you breathe in again (ie, chest breathing not belly breathing). As you breathe out try to contract your stomach further.
• Keep holding, breathing in, contracting more as you breathe out, and extend it to lifting your pelvis and squeezing your pelvic floor muscles as you breathe out.
• When you feel you can't get your stomach muscles any flatter, relax everything and then do another round.

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