A warm welcome to the ComfyBumpPhysio blog! I'm Naomi, and in this first post, I wanted to share the personal inspiration behind ComfyBumpPhysio and my passion for supporting your pregnancy.

I started ComfyBumpPhysio, an online pregnancy education website, to support women as they go through the journey of becoming a mother. I started it because pregnant women have questions I can answer. Questions about pain in pregnancy, which pregnancy exercises to do, which pelvic floor exercises are best, how physio can help in pregnancy, how to prepare for labour with effective techniques, what massage their partner can do in pregnancy and labour for pregnancy pain relief, how they can recover quickly after having a baby with postpartum physiotherapy, how to manage pain in labour and so many more. And I love answering them.

I think that having a baby is one of the most wonderful, positive, optimistic things that you can do in life. It’s an affirmation that you think life is worth living and that there are good things ahead. A woman who is supported well throughout her pregnancy, birth and recovery will be a better mother for it. A better mother means better outcomes for her child and this means better outcomes for society. Mothers need support. Families need support and having good online resources are a part of that. I want mothers to have good, easily accessible information that they can pull up at their time of need, whether it relates to pregnancy back pain, general wellbeing or other pregnancy issues.

Obviously the journey to get to the point that you are pregnant is very different for people. Some have a very straightforward process of being in a steady relationship and feeling secure, choosing together to have a baby, they get pregnant, things stay straightforward throughout the pregnancy and labour and they enjoy being parents. Many others face challenges at any point along that road. You may not be in a steady secure relationship, the pregnancy may be a surprise and you don’t really feel ready for it or you may have struggled for years to become pregnant. It may have been an incredibly expensive journey to become pregnant, the pregnancy may be high risk, it may be a pregnancy after loss, after a very difficult delivery in the past or with a child who has challenges. You may have decided to have the baby without a partner. You may have become pregnant and no longer have a partner who is involved.

People have differing levels of support. You may have close, supportive family and friends, your family may be supportive but live in another country, you may have a lot of friends having babies at around the same time as you or you may be the first (or last) of your friends to be pregnant. You may feel that there is no built-in support at all.

Our current reality is that people generally spend far more time online than they do in contact with their friends and family and we often look to the internet to provide us with support. There is a lot of great information available including antenatal physiotherapy education, and a supportive community out there, and there is also some not so great information and communities around. I encourage every pregnant person to find the support that works best for them. In-person support can be found through education and pregnancy exercise program classes run by your birth care provider or in your community. Reaching out through your neighbourhood internet groups for others in your situation might work. And then there are the online options.

I feel qualified to support women who are pregnant because I have been a physiotherapist for over 35 years. For much of that time I have worked with pregnant and postnatal women. Supporting them by treating the musculoskeletal aches and pains of pregnancy, pelvic girdle pain in pregnancy and postpartum, educating them about how to look after their bodies throughout the pregnancy and labour and as they recover from the birth, treating them on the post-natal ward and as outpatients when things haven’t been as straightforward as they would have liked, and running pregnancy and post-natal exercise classes. I have worked in the UK and the USA as well as in Australia and over the last 20 years have worked in a hospital that has one of the most diverse cultural populations of patients in Australia. I love hearing about different traditions of pregnancy and post-partum from other countries and seeing how they are integrated into pregnancy journeys in Australia.

I have 4 children and have given birth in a hospital, at a birthing centre and at home with the support of a midwife. I have been fortunate in that my pregnancies and deliveries were positive experiences for me, but it doesn’t mean that they were completely straight forward. I have had preeclampsia, I’ve been induced, I’ve had a complex presentation of baby and torn and needed stitches. I have had one baby come three weeks early and another one come three weeks late. I have had serious challenges with breast feeding, a baby who stopped breathing and needed to be on a monitor until they were a year old and have moved countries and houses when pregnant. I have had the experience of being very prepared and very underprepared for a baby to arrive. I hope that I can use my experiences and the experience of the thousands of women I have supported to support you through your pregnancy.

I cannot speak highly enough of the wonderful midwives, doctors and other health workers who supported me and who I have worked with – they are a breed apart. Heroes who support the everyday miracle of birth.

But our system is flawed. Life is not perfect, and I think that most women who give birth need more support than what is readily available through the institutions that support birth. More and more studies show that what a woman experiences when she is pregnant can have an impact on her and on her baby for the rest of their lives. There are some things about pregnancy and labour that we are not able to control but there are many that we can.

Pregnancy should be a positive joyful experience and if you have access to good information and support, then you can transform negative aspects of it into something that makes you stronger and better for the parenting journey. In the end, pregnancy is less than 10 months and labour is (hopefully) less than a few days (Yes – first labours average 8-12 hours but tell that to the woman who has had strong contractions for 48 hours and is still not ready to be admitted to the birth suite!). But parenting is for years and years. No-one can promise you a perfect pregnancy and delivery. But I can promise you good information about things that can make your pregnancy more comfortable. I can give you mental and physical ways to train yourself and your partner during pregnancy so that you are more prepared for labour. I can give you information about the changes your body is going through during the pregnancy, delivery and recovery and tell you how to support your body and optimise your recovery postpartum.

I encourage you to attend your midwifery education classes because although there is a small amount of overlap, they have a lot of other information to give you. I would also encourage you to consider attending hypnobirthing classes and getting in touch with a lactation consultant, a doula and a women’s health physiotherapist to make sure that you get the personalised support that you need for your journey, especially if you are experiencing pregnancy back pain or pelvic girdle pain.

I started this website so that it is not only the women and their support people who come to my face-to-face classes who can get this information. One problem with face-to-face classes is that you aren’t necessarily getting the information when you most need it. If you come to a class and hear all about back pain but don’t actually have back pain at the time, then you’re probably not really going to pay attention to that part of the class. If you attend a class early in the pregnancy, then you might take in the information about massage for during pregnancy but 20 weeks later have forgotten about the massage and hands-on techniques for pain relief during delivery. If you attend later in the pregnancy, you’ll have lost a lot of time for practicing the relaxation techniques and safe pregnancy exercises to support a more positive labour experience.

My courses are presented in short videos that cover the basics but don’t overwhelm with excess information. They hold the information that I want my daughters and their friends to know when they are pregnant. They hold the information that I want all pregnant women and their partners to know so that they have a more positive pregnancy and birth experience."

Best wishes on your pregnancy journey,

Naomi

Physiotherapist @ ComfyBumpPhysio