I’ve been doing my own exercises to try to prepare for birth whenever I can between bouts of nausea and tiredness, but I wanted to make sure I was doing the right thing. This site has a lot of great articles to get me started, and I found some pretty great tips on youtube.
I tried signing up for Every Mother (not the same as Every Mother Counts which is a great nonprofit) that I saw advertised on Instagram. They require a quarterly payment of $44 to start. The sign-up claimed you can “Cancel Anytime” but this turned out to not be true. I attempted to cancel within minutes, but they would not refund my $44. Be wary of signing up for any of these services if you aren’t willing to lose you payment if the service turns out to be not what you expected.
So why did I cancel? The first day’s assignment turned out to be two short video exercises. The first, was their primary core strengthening compression video which was short, but excellent. It is just a single exercise repeated, but it is a good one. But the second video started right in the middle of an intense aerobic routine which involved knees to chest (you can’t do this with a big belly) and then strangely (editing error?) transitions to push-ups against a table in a position I could not do at my stage of pregnancy, but someone may have been able to do earlier in the pregnancy if they had a very strong table. The model, who I think was also the founder, was so thin she looked like she had never been pregnant.
With this is mind, I looked throughout the site to see what other videos were available. The only ones with a pregnant woman were a few of the same core compression videos with simply longer lengths. The other ones all seemed to be quite difficult post pregnancy videos. In any case, there were not that many for a three month subscription. Overall, there were some good tips on their site and with the core compressions, but not enough to justify a three month subscription. They have a facebook group for support that I didn’t try. I try to limit my time and sharing of personal information on facebook.
I say try the free, doctor approved exercises on the Mayo Clinic website. Most of them have a balance ball, but I don’t think you need it.