hey there i was asked recently by a student in one of my childbirth classes about what she could do
an exact routine that i would recommend of birth ball exercises to try to encourage
natural inductions so if you're looking for a step-by-step routine of exercises then you're in
the right place now in this video i'm also going to work with my pregnant model brit
working with her again and she's going to help demonstrate these exercises really to make them
super easy so that you can do them on your own hi my name is britt and i am
38 weeks pregnant guys brit just had her baby and i know she's watching this video so if you
want to leave her a note of congratulations in the comments below i'm sure she'll see it
super exciting okay using the birth ball is one way that we can really encourage our baby's head
to engage down in our pelvis of course these exercises are not guaranteed to start labor
but when you're looking for some no risk things to do if you are hoping to get labor going then this
is a great list for you to start and i actually recommend doing them on a daily basis start to
finish this routine is going to take about 15 to 20 minutes and i recommend starting this right
around 36 weeks pregnant now today i have four exercises in this birth ball induction routine
and we're going to start first by making sure that your ball is properly positioned now your ball
should be inflated to a height so that when you sit on it your legs are at that 90 degree angle
so here in this video you can see brits look right now next you might want to consider doing these
exercises next to a couch or a chair where you can easily lean for balance if you're feeling wobbly
and britt's gonna show that position to you okay first up is our good old hip circles now you're
gonna want to do some gentle hip circles in one direction then switch and do them in the other
direction i would set a timer for at least two minutes on each side so we're going to do nice big
circles with our hips going one way don't be afraid to really do some nice big circles
then again we're gonna do the other way
nice big circles just imagine you're drawing a circle on your birth ball with your hips you
can also do some quicker and smaller hip circles see how those feel and then the other way quicker
smaller hip circles number two we're gonna do some lunge kind of side to side motion so with
that we're gonna have a nice feet planted up wide then we're just gonna slide the ball to one side
slide the ball to another side really stretching out the legs as we do it side to side again let's
do that between two and four minutes or so it's going to be a little bit of time
you're going to go back and forth stretching back and forth back
and forth so really stretching out those hips stretching out that pelvis our third one is my
personal favorite and that is a figure eight so a figure eight can be done horizontally where we're
making a figure eight this way but we can also make a figure eight vertically so first let's
start with that horizontal figure eight again we're just drawing the figure eight with our body
you can see there's a lot of movement here it's almost like a combination of a hip circle and a
lunge at the same time maybe it feels a little silly again if you're feeling off balance
you might want to get closer to a table or something that you can kind of hold on to
while you're doing it you might want to wear shoes if you feel like you're slippery slipping around
or you're on a hard surface so that is what a figure eight going horizontally looks like
now let's do the up and down figure eight okay so we're gonna go backwards or forwards and backwards
forwards and backwards forwards and backwards
making the figure eight now i recommend doing two minutes of each way so two minutes of your
horizontal figure eight two minutes of your vertical figuring now you'll probably feel
some really nice stretching going on in your hips especially for the first few days that
you practice this and i like to finish out this routine with just some gentle bouncing
nice gentle bouncing the reason i like to finish this way is because just getting our body used to
this motion is going to really benefit when we can use the birth ball when we have our baby so babies
really like being bounced imagine i'm holding a baby right here and it can really save your legs
when you um have that baby that is fussing at night and you've had a long day and you can just
do some gentle bouncing so we end this routine with just some gentle bouncing up and down awesome
okay now since we're talking about induction if you're wondering about taking castor oil for
induction i have put together this video right here that walks through that idea
of natural induction with castor oil it gives a straight forward way of figuring out if that
method is something that you might want to choose okay till next time get on the ball bye guys