Spinning Babies® Aware Practitioner

While pregnant you can receive gentle, effective support for the challenges of pregnancy and make your best preparation for birth. You can prepare mindfully for your birth journey, connecting deeply within yourself, with your baby and with your partner as you choose. As a somatic movement therapist and Spinning Babies® Aware Practitioner, I bring you the best hands-on support for more ease in pregnancy & at birth.

Relieve discomfort and pain

Craniosacral therapy and myofascial release and toning can resolve many discomforts of pregnancy and prepare both you and your baby for birth. Many pregnant women experience discomfort or pain in these areas:

• Lower back pain
• Pain in the groin area, the lower belly and anywhere around the belly
• Aching in the perineum area and the bottom
• Sciatic nerve pain, in the butt or down the leg
• Hip pain, including sacroiliac joint in the back, or sides
• Rib pain
• No room to breath
• Pain in your sides
• Edema, swelling ankles and legs, hands
• Shoulder and neck pain
• Headaches

Alignment for easier birth

Your discomfort is a red flag for alignment problems that place restrictions on your baby and are likely to result in a difficult position for baby, and then a difficult birth.  Persistent discomfort is a signal calling for myofascial release. Balancing and releasing the pelvic muscles and fascia can allow baby to find a good position for birth.

If you are in discomfort, it’s best to get help early, so that your baby can find her way head down, and then easily slide into your pelvis in the final weeks of pregnancy.   If baby is in a difficult position in late pregnancy, bodywork can make a open up space in your pelvis to give your baby room to settle head down.

Pain in pregnancy is information about imbalanced pelvic structures

Even with a head down baby, discomfort is a signal that the inside of the pelvis is restricted.  Birth can be slow, can stall, have irregular patterns of contractions, or be very painful with misalignment of pelvic tissues.  Why wait?? Take care of yourself and baby.  You are the queen of your world and your baby’s world.  Far more important than a lot of cute gifts at baby showers, ask for gift certificates to get bodywork.

A difficult pregnancy can also affect your developing baby in many ways, depending on your conditions and when your baby is affected during his development. Discomfort anywhere in your pelvic region is typically mirrored by restrictions on your baby, limiting her ability to move during birth and shaping bones of her head, which then may create challenges with breastfeeding.

Mindfulness & movement for easier birth

Birth is a profoundly intimate physical, emotional and spiritual passage for you and your baby. As you approach birth, you can cultivate mindfulness and movement practices to connect with your inner being and to connect with your baby. You can listen deeply to your body and mind, where you can cultivate your ability to track with your own inner voice and body cues. These practices help you develop power and fluidity to meet the intensity of labor.

In an alignment session I will teach you and your partner essential activities for pregnancy & birth from Body-Mind Centering®, Spinning Babies®, BioDynamic Body Balancing and others.  You will learn both movement and support activities that create an easier passage for baby during birth.  These simple activities are are extremely valuable to begin during pregnancy for your comfort, and carry over into birth as resources for mothers and partners.

In a belly mapping session during the final months of your pregnancy, we will identify the position of your baby through your own observations of his or her movement.  I will draw a simple sketch of your baby on your belly – and take photos as a keepsake.

Enter your baby’s world

While pregnant you can enter your baby’s world and feel the physiological rhythms shared by you and your baby. When you experience these directly, you know somatically how to help your baby take his own active role in birth. The opportunity for your baby to be an active partner in birth creates a template for her lifelong approach to learning and how she processes emotions. You and your baby can experience the intensity of birth as powerful and empowering when you relax deeply and partner.

Time to heal

In pregnancy you may find that old habits of thought and emotion are not working well anymore. Somatic therapy and Hakomi emotional processing supports release of physical restrictions, unhelpful beliefs and unhelpful feelings. If you have experienced a prior difficult birth, birth trauma, other trauma or abuse, you may find that these affect your pregnancy, or potentially stall out labor. Family pressures and stress may also take their toll. A woman can meet her own difficult history and current conditions with attentive support that can enable her to process painful events, come to terms with how things are, and to have greater resilience.

With the coming of your baby a new family forms. You may want to create intimate connections among your partner, your baby and yourself to prepare for birth and your baby’s arrival. With Heart to Heart to Heart you gather your personal support to create a setting and activities that honors each person in your journey through pregnancy, birth and parenting.

Somatic therapies and education

You may work one-on-one, or may work together with your partner or your birth team. Sessions may include movement, touch, sounding, body-based imagery or finding release in physical or emotional challenges. I employ the resonant touch and developmental movement of somatic therapy that is uniquely relevant for babies and mothers. I draw on developmental movement as the wellspring of body and mind integration for all humans. You can find deep connection with your baby in developmental movement for birth and mothering. Articles can help you prepare for birth and your coming baby.

What to expect in a session

Body-mind integration from the beginning

Essential wellness for mother & baby

 Connecting in with baby

 Soften into support

Betsy attended MamaBebe prenatal class to prepare for her twins’ birth. As she moved into the fullness of her final trimester, she found the fluidity and buoyancy of her organs.

She and her twins joined the developmental play group for support, ideas on helping each of them thrive, and for community.

 Got my mobility back

My sacrum felt amazing all weekend – like I wasn’t even pregnant – after our myofascial bodywork.  It’s feeling a bit tighter now but no pain. Because it’s unstable, I’m combining movement activities at home with alternating chiropractic and myofascial release help. I feel like I have my body and mobility back. Thank you. – Kim K

Rotated breech baby

You’ve already touched my friend’s baby in an indirect way. At about 36 weeks her little one was breech, so her OB was talking about turning it manually. We rebozoed instead and had her turned in a week! Never would have known what to do without your tutelage.
– Kim K