Hello and welcome to today's video where I'll be talking about birth balls and teaching you
specific birth ball exercises that you can do during pregnancy. My name's Anja and I'm
an antenatal class teacher specializing in hypnobirthing. I upload new pregnancy and birth
preparation videos to my YouTube channel every single week, so don't forget to hit the subscribe
button and click the bell icon so you don't miss any of my upcoming videos ;) Before we get started
with the birth ball exercises, I just need to tell you some important things about birth balls. If
you're under five foot four in height, you're best off buying a 55 centimetre high ball. What that
means is, when your birth ball is fully inflated, it's 55 centimetres high from the floor up to
the top of the ball. If you're between five foot four and five foot eight, you should purchase a
65 centimetre ball and if you're over five foot eight you should purchase a 75 centimetre ball.
When you're using your birth ball, you should place it on a non-slip surface (like a carpet)
and preferably wear non-slip shoes, socks or even go barefoot. Also, when seated, it's important that
you're sitting up straight and that your hips are open in a 10-2 position. What I mean by that is
if you visualize or imagine a clock in your head, one of your feet is meant to be pointing at the
number 10 and the other foot is pointing towards the number 2. Also, when you're sitting on your
birth ball, it's important that your bum and your hips are positioned higher than your knees
because this encourages optimal foetal positioning. It encourages your baby to get head down
into the anterior facing position and this is the best position for a smooth and comfortable
vaginal delivery. If your bum and hips are lower than your knees, you either need to pump up your
birth ball more or purchase a bigger size. You can sit on a birth ball at any point during pregnancy
but the exercises I'm going to teach you today are best suited for the third trimester of pregnancy.
You can start doing these exercises when you're over 32 weeks pregnant. I always recommend
that you check with your care provider before you start doing any birth ball exercises, especially if
you've had any premature leakage of amniotic fluid, any bleeding during pregnancy or if you've got a
low lying placenta. If you've experienced any of those things during your pregnancy it might not
be safe for you to do these birth ball exercises. But once you've got the go ahead from your care
provider, you can start doing these pregnancy birth ball exercises every single day from 32 weeks :) The
first exercise that we're going to do are HIP CIRCLES. Before we begin, make sure that your feet
are pointing in that 10-2 position and that you're sitting up straight. We're just going to circle
our hips in the right direction so circling them towards the right
and we're going to do about 10 or so of those. This position is great to help your baby to engage
in the lower pelvis ready for birth. As I said, it helps encourage your baby to get
head down, facing your back and it also helps to alleviate any back pain or discomfort.
Not sure how many we've done but hopefully we've done about 10 now!
Next, we're going to go in in the opposite direction so towards the left...
I'm not as good at going towards the left but circling your hips towards the left, left circles...
Again, we're going to do about 10 of those.
Keeping your hips open, making sure that you're sitting up straight, that you don't
feel like you're slipping in any way, that your feet feel securely positioned on the ground.
The second exercise is called the PELVIC TILT. What you're going to be doing is
tilting your pelvis forward and then pulling it back in.
Keeping your back straight, bringing your hips forward and back.
Again, making sure that you feel safe and comfortably positioned on your birth ball,
your feet are planted squarely on the ground and we're just going to do about another five of these...
You're doing well! The third exercise is SIDE LUNGES so what we're going to do is
lunge from side to side. Straightening your legs alternately,
keeping your back straight, keeping your feet firmly planted on the ground.
We're just going to do about another six or seven on each side...
that's four
five
six and seven, well done! The final exercise is simply to BOUNCE GENTLY on top of your birth
ball. You just want to keep your bum firmly seated on top of the ball, you don't want to be
jumping up on top of it or anything, so just gentle bounces, keeping your back straight -
making sure that your feet are still in that 10-2 position... Let's just do about another
five bounces one two three four five. Now that you've learned those birth ball exercises,
sit on your birth ball every day from 32 weeks of pregnancy- set aside about 10 to 15 minutes
and just practice each of those exercises. I recommend that you go through all of them
so do your right hip circles first maybe do 20 to 30 of those, then do 20 to 30 of the left circles
then do your pelvic tilt about 20 to 30 of those again, then the side lunges 20 to 30 lunges on
either side and then 20 to 30 bounces on the ball. You can keep repeating those exercises over
and over again until you've had enough. As long as you feel safe to do so, you might want to do your
birth ball exercises whilst listening to your favourite music or watching a film on Netflix. It
can get a little bit boring doing these exercises over and over again so if there's something that
you can distract yourself with visually, it might help you to do the birth ball exercises for a
little bit longer. Thank you so much for watching this video today, I hope you found it useful!
Let me know in the comments section how many weeks pregnant you are and let me know how you're
finding your birth ball exercises when you start doing them. If you're keen to sign up to one of
my FREE hypnobirthing taster sessions, just click the link in the video description below. I'll be
uploading more videos about birth balls and how you can use them during labor and birth, so please
look out for those on my YouTube channel in the coming weeks. Take care and see you again soon, bye! :)