Daily Essentials With a Toddler
Balancing caring for a toddler and pregnancy can be challenging, especially when it comes to exercising. Spinning Babies® has your back with the Daily Essentials video: a simple series of activities to keep your body active as you progress through your pregnancy that you can do from the comfort of your home. The Daily Essentials video is a collaboration of knowledge and movements for exercise and positioning in pregnancy created by Spinning Babies® and Blooma. Blooma has studios in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Plymouth, Minnesota; Nashville, and Toronto. If Blooma doesn’t have a studio in your town, your prenatal yoga teacher may enjoy Sarah Longacre’s Prenatal Yoga Teacher Training.
Daily Essentials can be done at once or in parts
When Daily Essentials is begun at 30 weeks gestation and done, well, daily, we hear parents report comfort in pregnancy and easier birth. We’re so happy you are finding the daily activities inspiring. We believe the best way to use the video content is to watch the first two portions of Gail explaining the daily activities as Sarah does the poses, then watch the maternal positioning portion. Wait to watch Sarah’s yoga session until you do her poses slowly (in the portion where Gail is speaking) for your joint alignment first. As long as one of the two sessions on Daily Essentials is done daily, you’ve met the fullest daily requirements. But do as many as you are able to keep your joints limber. If time is an issue, you can alternate a portion of Daily Essentials each day so that you get through the whole half-hour session three times a week. Regular practice of all activities is, of course, best, though not always possible.
The ball squeeze and the calf stretch can be done 2–3 times a day for a while and then once a day. If you find your urgency to urinate increases, then go back to twice a day for the ball squeeze.
Practice the body-balancing techniques described on Spinning Babies® Parent Class every weekend, or twice a week, as you are able to get help for doing them. The Rebozo Manteada, Forward-leaning Inversion, and Side-lying Release are also shown on the website under “Techniques.” The Standing Sacral Release is subtle, and if your helper can touch with finesse, it’s a wonderful way to support the sacrum during slight movement, which is not only necessary during birth but helpful every day.
Pregnant parents benefit from the “Your Pregnancy: Week-by-Week” pages on the website. You may have already found them from links in our free parent emails if you’re subscribed to them. Or you can simply follow the links under “Pregnancy” on the website.
Gail Tully and Sarah Longacre using the flashlight test for a visual representation of sitting up. The beam goes straight or aims slightly down in ideal positions for resting—with a toddler, too!
Doing the Daily Essentials with a toddler
“I have been using the Daily Essentials even though we are not yet pregnant—still trying! I can tell the exercises are helpful to my overall health, but I have a question about the flashlight test and related information. We have a toddler who loves to be rocked, usually in the recliner, and that seems to play havoc with the flashlight test. Do you have any material on holding, rocking, or carrying other small children when pregnant? I don’t want to jeopardize the new baby’s position once we’re pregnant, especially because I want to try for a VBAC. But I also don’t want to jettison snuggling and rocking our toddler.”
— Amy, mother with a toddler in tow
We agree, snuggling a toddler is divine! Most pregnant parents will not lose the benefits of daily body-balancing activities with a session of snuggling in a chair. Activities are meant to be used together every day in ways that prevent issues that a short time of lounging would cause in the lower back or sacrum. See these activities in motion on our Daily Essentials video (or some of these and other daily activities in the “Pregnancy” section of our website). You can follow the relaxing time with more relaxing pelvic rocking on hands and knees and other daily activities that undo sitting back. It’s the previous strains and twists that existed before now that you want to address with the body-balancing techniques from our Parent Class, which lengthen and balance your body even more.
Some will need professional help to align pelvic joints or mobilize the pelvis. If using Daily Essentials and Parent Class isn’t enough to help your baby into position or help you have enough comfort to lie down and get enough sleep to feel rested, find a chiropractor, osteopath, or similar professional. But find one that knows pregnancy! Our Aware Practitioners listing is a wonderful resource for finding the right fit.
Please note: When you buy Daily Essentials from us, you’ll get two emails: one with a receipt from PayPal and one with the link from Spinning Babies®. You are charged only once. Be mindful that the download link can take up to an hour to show up in your inbox and may go to your “Promotions” folder. You can download to any device that has room for the file and the bandwidth to play the video. Streaming is included and available by a password you’ll create so that you can view and practice Daily Essentials anywhere you have an internet connection.
Daily Essentials Video – purchase here!
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