Our exercises for you to learn in your 8th month of pregnancy for a normal birth are easier than the photo attached to this post! We guarantee that … and much more practical. What are the best exercises for a normal delivery to do when you’re 8 months pregnant? Every exercise you do at the 8th month in order to have a normal birth must make sense to you. Don’t waste one moment of your pregnancy doing exercises that you won’t be able to directly apply to your normal delivery. This is so important.

Do you know how many women have said this about their childbirth education classes: ‘Everything went out of my head as soon as labor started’. That should tell us something! If it doesn’t grow corn, it ain’t worth learning. Pragmatics is what you need not wishy-washy, not airy-fairy.

There’s nothing more real than a big object

By 8 months of pregnancy, you are REALLY aware that your baby is growing rapidly and is no longer anything you felt from conception to about 20 weeks when all you could feel was a flutter. In fact from 24 weeks to 8 months ( 32 weeks pregnant) your baby didn’t seem so big but now he/she feels really big. And you know that your baby is going to get bigger. How much bigger? The average head of a newborn is the size of a grapefruit.

If you want a normal delivery then you had better do exercises that make it easier to come down, through and out of your body. That’s only one goal of your exercises but vitally important. These are the skills/exercises Birthing Better online birthing classes  our Trust offers you:

  • Hip Lift … side-to-side space in the pelvis
  • Sacral Manoeuvre … back to front space in the pelvis
  • Sit Bone Spread … side-to-side outlet of the pelvis
  • Pubic Bone Spread … create space in the narrow pubic bone
  • Tail Bone Movement … make long tailbone flexible
  • Positions… Best exercises in the world so you know how to keep this big object over your pelvic inlet and do not compress your pelvis as your baby moves down, through and out.
  • Pelvic Clock … softening inside your pelvic soft tissue

Why not start with these? All Birthing Better skills/exercises were developed by hundreds of ordinary mothers and fathers so rest assured the skills work. And what’s neat is your partner shares the same body and can feel all these exercises in their own body. This matters. When you both can feel an exercise then it can become a shared skill.

The good news

Birthing Better online birthing classes are not rocket science so you nor your partner need to have any anatomy or physiology. All the exercises are simple, easy to do, and fun to learn. You’ll feel how you can create space inside your pelvis and also how you can reduce that space when tension is placed into your pelvis.

None of the Birthing Better exercises take long to learn nor do they have to be practiced regularly. They need to be practiced until you are certain you understand them.

You’ll know instantaneously that Birthing Better skills can create space inside your body for your baby. You can immediately see how you might use the skill in your birth.

The bad news

Whether you birth at home with a midwife, in Birth Centre or hospital you will have one or more medical assessments, monitoring and procedures (AMPs). You might call them ‘interventions’ as natural birth advocates call them … all lumped together. The implication is that if you have one ‘intervention’ then there will be a cascade of interventions and you can then kiss your normal delivery goodbye.

More good news

Birthing Better gives you more exercises to do in your 8th month of pregnancy for your normal delivery.

  • Directed Breathing … learn how to expand on every inhalation and soften inside your pelvis with every exhale.
  • Verbal communication  … practice your ‘yes’ and ‘no’
  • Non-verbal communication … sometimes it’s hard to speak up so you’ll be able to go through exercises that help you and your partner communicate easily without words.
  • Teamwork … there’s nothing better than knowing you are working together well.

Interventions/AMPs will never stop you from using your skills. Many Birthing Better families experienced the assessments, monitoring and procedures that were part of the standards of care of their midwife or obstetrician and even hospital policies.

Some interventions are chosen by the birthing woman, needed because of circumstances or imposed on any woman. Birthing Better families pretty much accepted (may not have liked or wanted) whatever happened and just used all their skills. In other words, skills grew from the exercises you’ve been learning in your 8th month of pregnancy for your normal delivery.

‘Is it too late?’

Goodness no. What is ideal has to be balanced by what is real. You are where you are in your pregnancy. You can’t replay this day in your pregnancy tomorrow so why regret anything? Time is moving on and your birth is getting closer.

You are more motivated and that motivation will lead you to learn, quickly practicing, integrating and using the skills you learn from the exercises we’re going to teach you.

And rest assured there are tens of thousands of Birthing Better families behind you and the hundreds who developed these skills. Do you honestly believe all Birthing Better families did everything perfectly? Get real. This means just perfecting one or more skills and doesn’t worry about being perfect.

Learn now and you’ll feel more confident and you’ll be more likely to achieve your normal birth. Here’s the added BONUS. You’ll birth better no matter how your birth unfolds so you don’t have to be terrified if your normal birth turns to custard. Always keep in your mind that you got pregnant to have a baby not a ‘type’ of birth. Your role is to use skills to birth your baby.

Birthing Better skills were developed by moms and dads in the early 1970s in the US and used by many thousands globally in all types of birth. Birthing Better online birthing classes are housed in Common Knowledge Trust.