Action Steps For The Perfect Pregnancy1

When you daydream about your pregnancy what are the sort of things you think about?

Do you imagine yourself enjoying lazy summer days, going out for a healthy lunch with a friend?

Looking fabulous, on the arm of your proud hubby in a sexy maternity dress at a party?

Feeling content and happy with life and joyful about your baby and your gorgeous pregnant body and glowing face?

Does this daydream reflect your reality?

If not, then why not?

I'm not being facetious about it, I just really want you to ask yourself deep down, what the limiting factors are that are stopping you from achieving the pregnancy you dream about?

You see by identifying what "brakes" we put on ourselves we can easily let go of our doubts and start living the life we really want for ourselves.

What are your brakes?

The Top 10 Changes You MUST Make To Your Diet Now That You Are Pregnant!

Finding out that you are pregnant can be one of the most exciting moments of a woman's life. Just the thought of carrying and nurturing a little baby in your belly brings warm fuzzy feelings to those of us with maternal instincts! However, once the initial excitement subsides there are a LOT of things you need to think about.

Now that you are pregnant, you'll need to think about a specific pregnancy diet, your exercise during pregnancy routine, your working hours, sleep patterns, your social life.... In fact, there's so many things to think about when it comes to pregnancy health and fitness, it can be hard to know where to start!

So to make it a little easier for you, this series of articles is going to break it all down into the top 10 of everything you need to know to make your pregnancy fitness a breeze!

One of the first things you will need to do is look at what you can and cannot eat for great pregnancy nutrition:

1. Stop ALL caffeine - yes there are loads of sites that tell you a couple of cups of coffee a day won't kill you, but that doesn't mean that it will do you any good. Caffeine overstresses the adrenal glands and sends LOTS of stress hormones into your bloodstream, which keeps you in permanent fight or flight mode and disrupts your circadian rythym (sleep cycles). This is exhausting for your poor body which is already dealing with extreme fatigue from all the changes happening with your pregnancy and can have a big impact on the welfare of you and your baby.

Some studies show that caffeine can lead to miscarriage, (although there is not enough research in this area) so play it safe and stay well clear!

2. Say goodbye to runny eggs! You MUST cook your eggs all the way through so that the yolk is solid to prevent salmonella.

3. Avoid peanuts and go careful with other nuts if you or your partner have allergies including asthma, eczema or hayfever. It is also thought that peanuts can lead to your baby developping a peanut allergy. So my advice - if in doubt, leave it out! It's really not worth the risk for the sake of a bag of nuts - surely!

4. Load up on leafy green vegetables like spinach which contain lots of folic acid. You should also be taking a folic acid supplement as this is essential in the first trimester of pregnancy to prevent neural tube defects. Taken daily whilst trying to get pregnant and in the 1st trimester of pregnancy folic acid can reduce the risks of neural tube defects by up to 70%

5. Drink MORE WATER! This may seem like a contradiction in terms when you're running to the loo every 2 minutes, but most pregnant women don't drink enough BECAUSE of this! Hydration is essential for pregnancy health.

6. Don't eat undercooked meat - You may love a tender cut of ribeye steak that is pink in the middle, but you won't love the coliform bacteria, salmonella or toxoplasmosis that may be hiding in it.

7. Try to eat a different coloured vegetable with every meal. Each vegetable contains different macronutrients so by eating from the whole spectrum, you can be certain that you are getting everything you need to grow a healthy baby and stay in great shape through your pregnancy!

8. Stay well clear of raw shellfish as it could well cause food poisoning. Cooking shellfish will eradicate some infection, but it won't destroy the algae related infection associated with red tides.

9. Give tuna, swordfish, shark and king mackerel a miss as the contain high levels of mercury.

10. Eat protein with EVERY meal. Protein is the building blocks of life and your baby needs a LOT of this to grow, so never skip out on your protein!

Protein also takes longer to digest so making you feel fuller for longer - great news for those of you suffering morning sickness!

So that's it! This list is by no means exhaustive but it gives you a great place to start. As always, with any major change in your diet you should consult with your pregnancy health care team before starting a new programme or radically changing your diet.

If you want one-step pregnancy health & fitness, with NO brainpower required, visit http://www.the9monthclub.com and find out how you can go from feeling fat and a frump to fit with a fabulous bump in just 30 days!

Do This Revolutionary Exercise After Giving Birth To Gurantee Flat Abs!

Listen to The 9 Month Club on Blog Talk Radio
Yesterday I hosted my very first 9 Month Club radio show, (yes that's right, I've got my own show now - it's soooo exciting!, with special guest Kaisa Tuominen of Integral Fitness.

Kaisa is a perinatal fitness expert with a wealth of knowledge and has also recently trained as a Doula. Kaisa runs her own studios in Catalunya in Spain where she uses a very unusual and revolutionary new method for retraining tyhe pelvic floor and transverse abdominals after birth. She calls this method FLAT, (For Life Abdominal Training), and the acronym does exactly what it says on the tin!

Kaisa discovered this method from a physio in France who was using it to rehabilitate postnatal women with prolapse and severe urinary incontinence problems and brought it into her studio and introduced it to her postnatal clients, where she found it made a remarkable difference to recovery time and getting your pre-pregnancy body back.

To listen to the interview and find out more about FLAT, how it works and how to do it, click on the flash player on the right.

If you have any questions please post them below!

There's Something I Need To Tell You...

My Dad and River


Now I've already posted my "official" article for today, but there is something on my mind and I wanted to get it off my chest.

For those of you on the site who know me well and have been there for me and followed my journey over the past year through pregnancy, my birth and beyond, you'll know that I've had more than my fair share of ups and downs. More downs than I'd like to have experienced but hey, what doesn't kill you and all that...!

Well, after a welcome return to normailty and a happy family life, these past few weeks have seen me return to dealing with a LOT of stress. Firstly my dad's cancer has come back. Now my dad is a fighter and saw off stomach and bowel cancer a few years ago without batting an eyelid. He kicked Cancer in the proverbial behind and at the age of 71 , still makes it to the gym 5 times a week.

But now it's in his throat. He's just finished radiotherapy and although is very chipper on the outside, I worry about how he really feels about it all. Don't you think that parents have this way of protecting their kids from the truth - no matter how old we get?

Secondly I've been really ill myself. To be honest I think it's self-inflicted. Since my son was 2 weeks old I've been working every spare minute I can find to finish writing the product I started when I was pregnant. Even then I was getting up at 7am and finishing writing at 11pm every night, but since River was born it's taken a toll. Instead of sleeping and recovering I'll do anything but - that's including the housework, teaching classes, working out and trying to work part time as well as be a full time mum to a young baby!

Isn't it funny how you get stuck in a way of thinking? Instead of opening my eyes and seeing that I was running myself into the ground, all I could think about was how much I had to do and then stress about not achieveing any of it! Is this ringing any bells with any of you?

So about 4 weeks ago I developped an abcess in my back. Yuk - had to have it operated and couldn't walk for two weeks OR look after my son properly! It was seriously THE MOST PAINFUL THING EVER! And that INCLUDES CHILDBIRTH!

It was the wakeup call I needed to kick me into touch. Whilst trying to be all things to everyone, I ended up being no use to everyone including myself! I

couldn't walk or look after my baby, I couldn't work as I was on morphine and a whole host of other painkillers that zonked me right out. My dad was having daily treatments on his throat and I couldn't even take him to the hospital, or help out round his house.

I'm much better now, but going through all of this has made me realise that no matter how stressful life gets and no matter how much POO it throws at you, you have to to be strong enough of mind to let it wash right off.

Yes it's upsetting when people you love are suffering and it's scary when the thought of losing someone so close to you becomes a stark possibility but LIFE CARRIES ON. So, you can either let the bad stuff drag you down, or you can wake up every day and say

"No matter what this day brings I WILL enjoy all that it has to offer and teach me."

From every experience we share a memory is created and another lesson learnt. So I will take the bad with the good and USE my experiences to become a more fulfilled person.

Are High Heels Really That Bad in Pregnancy?

I think I echo most women's sentiments when I say that one of the worst things about pregnancy is the point where your bump gets too big for you to comfortably wear your gorgeous collection of high heels or when your feet swell so much that you can't get those shoes on anyway, even if you tried!

The thing is though, no matter how uncomfortable they can be, sometimes heels are the only way to make an outfit work. When you've found that perfect dress for a night out with the girls, your hair is gleaming and your makeup looks amazing, you can just hear those strappy, sexy sandals calling you from the back of the closet.

But hey, if you wear heels out once a week can it really be that bad for you? Surely not!

Well let me tell you the facts and you make up your mind for yourself...

First of all you need to understand what heels do to the body. When you put on a pair of heels you tip your weight forward so that your centre of gravity shifts. This means that you have to adjust your posture or alignment so that you don't fall flat on your face.

To enable you to balance, your pelvis has to tilt anteriorly which increases the arch in your lower back. This in turn compresses the discs in your lower spine and crushes the nerves leading out from the spinal cord.

Your abs become stretched giving you a protruding belly and your hip flexors shorten.

On the top half your shoulders will round forward to balance out the lower body and your head will migrate forward putting enormous strain on your neck.

Now, consider this. All of the postural problems above are also prevalent in pregnancy. The weight of your bump and boobs will cause the exact same things to happen. Not only that, but because you are pregnant you will also be producing a lot of the hormones relaxin and oestrogen which make ligaments and muscles relax and joints become extremely unstable.

So when you add heels to a pregnant posture you are increasing the damage to your back, shoulders and neck to the point of overload. And this is when your body tells you enough is enough and gives up. Hence you end up with severe back pain and possibly serious long-term damage.

So although you may think that wearing heels on the odd night out can't hurt too much, just remember that your body is already stretched to the limit carrying your baby.

Is it really worth it for one night out?

5 Exercise To Do Today In Just 5 Minutes!

You know one of the hardest things about getting your exercise in when you're pregnant is just finding the time and motivation to do it.

Once you actually get to the gym and make a start it's not that bad, but sometimes it's just the thought of having to pack your workout gear as well as everything else you have to remember for the day, plus find the motivation to do it after a long day at work, that scuppers all your good intentions.

Don't worry, you're not alone! Even I found I had days like this when I was pregnant and I'm a personal trainer and coach by trade!

So to make your day just a little bit easier I've put together a simple workout for you that will work all those wobbly bits in just 5 minutes! You don't even need to get changed!


Exercise 1

Step Ups - Find some stairs or a step that is of a reasonably challenging height ( about 12 inches off the floor is about right).

If you are feeling unsteady use something for support - like the stair rail or a friends shoulder!

Starting on the left leg, place your whole foot on top of the step and push through the heel and buttock to lift your body up onto the step.

Step back with the left leg and lower yourself back down as slowly and controlled as possible. Repeat 5 times then switch legs.

Exercise 2

Stick Ups - Find a wall to lean against. Stand against it so that your head, bottom and feet are touching. Squeeze your bottom down hard so that you bring your pelvis into a neutral position.

Now bring up your arms so that you are standing with your elbows in line with your ribs and the backs of your hands touching the wall behind you, palms facing forwards (imagine someone has a gun pointed at you and has told you to stick 'em up!).

Starting on your right, maintain contact with the wall as you slide your arm up to an extended position, pushing your arm up as high as it will go, but keeping your postural alignment.

Now exhale as you bring the arm back dow and resist a little as you work. Repeat on the other side and work up to a set of 10 each side.

Exercise 3

Squats

Stand with your feet just wider than hip distance and with your feet turned out to 45 degrees.

Tip the weight back into your heel and stick out your bottom and your chest.

Now slowly and with control sit back and lower your body into a sitting position.

Squeeze your pelvic floor and your bottom as your push yourself back up to stanidng, remembering to bring your hips all the way through at the top.

Repeat for 10.

Exercise 4

Flutters

Standing with your feet under your hips and your bottom squeezed down, bring up your arms to shoulder height with palms facing forwards. (As if you are making a T shape).

Tuck your chin back (like you're making a double chin). Now using the muscles that sit between your shoulder blades, squeeze your shoulders back and together, as if pinching a pencil between your shoulder blades.

Repeat for 20

Exercise 5

Transverse Squeezes

Either sitting or on all fours, take a long deep breath and let your belly expanda s it fills with air.

Now as you exhale from the pit of your stomach pull the belly button back to your spine and hold for a count of 10. (DO NOT HOLD YOUR BREATH!).

Take a big inhale and fill up with air again to release.

Repeat for 10.

OK? All done?

Great, have a wonderful day!

P.S. Remember if there's anything you would like to see here on my blog or you have any questions about how to stay fit and healthy through your pregnancy, then just post your comment at the end of my blog!

Pregnant? Feeling Fat, Frumpy and Unfit? Here's How You Can Change All That...Right Now!

When I was first pregnant I felt... crap!

(Sorry for the bluntness but there's no other way to describe it that really does it justice)

Morning sickness hit me with a vengeance, my energy dropped through the floor and my motivation to do anything but curl up on the sofa and eat was non-existent.

To top it all, whenever I looked in the mirror, staring back at me was a fatter, frumpier and fatigued woman that I hardly recognised as me.

Sounds familar, right?

Sure it does!

Pregnant women all go through that phase when they feel that, although they're gaining something wonderful in the form of their new baby, that they've lost something really important... themselves.

My detachment from myself got so bad and my stress levels got so high that I ended up in hospital and nearly lost my baby. A terrible time for me, but a wakeup call too.

When I got discharged, I vowed that I'd never let myself get to the position where my health, my baby's health and my very sanity were threatened again and I began to create a system to ensure that I would look and feel great both during the pregnancy and beyond.

Click here for Your Complete Pregnancy Support System

I wanted to create something that was different to everything else out there - after all I had all the pregnancy books, the prenatal fitness dvd's and I was signed up to every pregnancy website and forum under the sun, but none of them could give me what I was searching for...

Click here for Your Complete Pregnancy Support System

A complete daily guide that would take me by the hand and tell me exactly what I needed to do every single day of my pregnancy to ensure that I looked toned and sexy, felt relaxed, calm and happy and ensured that both me and my baby were as healthy and fit as possible.

To find out more about my daily coaching programme for complete health in pregnancy, just click on the link below.

Click here for Your Complete Pregnancy Support System

To make it even easier for you, you can get my system right now for the trial price of just £4.95 for the first 30 days. If you don't like it just cancel your subscription before the 30 days are up! If you decide before then that this just isn't for you, I'll even give you a full refund - no questions asked!

So look - all the risk is on me! Try it for 30 days and I can guarantee that you'll love the confident, glowing, sexy woman staring back at you from the mirror!