Vicky BF Yoga

18/07/2025

Imagine…

11/05/2025

Come along to our fabulous online study weekend to hear three inspirational speakers in the world of maternity:

Alex Smith is an editor for the AIMS journal, a grandmother and a witness to some truly wonderful physiological births. She has close to half a century's experience as a childbirth educator.

Rehana Jawadwala has spent over 20 years in the health and fitness industry. She has a PhD in exercise physiology and nutrition and speaks extensively on the importance of physical activity during the perinatal period. A mother of 2 she is also the founder of MummyYoga, a specialist perinatal yoga service in Chester where she supports and has supported hundreds of women and their families in their physical, mental and emotional preparation for birth and parenting.

Jacqui Tomkins is an experienced midwife of 25 years who is passionate about advocacy and choice for women and their families. She currently works as a self-employed midwife, successfully running a busy London practice for the last 21 years. She is also the chair of Independent midwives UK (IMUK) an organisation that champions and supports self-employed midwives across the country and in 2014 was awarded Midwife of the Year. In her spare time, she enjoys meeting and talking to inspirational women on her podcast The Eve Event, conversations with disobedient women.

To book your place email Lolly Stirk: lollysastirk@gmail.com

24/03/2025

Do not trust nhs midwives to advocate for you in the birth space. Even the kindest and most woman centred midwife has to follow the trust policies and protocols.
Learn to advocate for yourself, bring your birth supporters on board with your needs and wishes, hire a doula if you need extra support.

https://www.rachelreed.website/rcrp

17/03/2025

📕 The childbirth journey is holistic; it is physical, emotional, psychological, cultural, social and spiritual. Viewing it as a purely physical event disregards its power and potential. Considering childbirth as a rite of passage allows us to acknowledge that self-transformation occurs regardless of where it happens or how it unfolds. It supports women to find their individual pathways through their rite of passage and requires care providers to consider how their actions and interactions influence women’s experiences.
https://www.rachelreed.website/rcrp

30/01/2025

Staying active during your labour is so vital. Being able to move, sway, (and hide in the loo). Things you just can’t do when you have been told you ‘need’ to be induced, ‘need’ continuous monitoring, or you find you ‘need’ to have an epidural (because the previous two things make labour intolerable).
To find classes that teach you about birth, trusting your instinct and staying active in labour visit www.yogabirth.org and YogaBirth
and be the boss of your baby’s birth.

24/11/2024

Here at YogaBirth our pregnancy classes are more than just a yoga class. They will empower you, bringing you strength and community and all the good stuff as you embark on your journey to motherhood. 💜

15/11/2024

Induction of labour has become the norm so much that many women accept it as an inevitable conclusion to their pregnancy. However there are many implications to an induced labour including the trauma of a managed labour for you and the possibility of long term emotional, neurological and developmental problems for your baby.
Make sure induction is right for you and your baby.
Read Sara Wickham’s work and find out more.

Every year, about this time, we start to hear from women who are being given unrequested dates for induction of their labour because their due date falls around the festive period.

Induction of labour may be offered (and sometimes requested) around high days and holidays, but it has pros and cons and implications, which makes it a big decision that is worth thinking about carefully.

Please get lots of information before you decide what’s right for you and your baby.

When I was writing both my ‘Inducing Labour’ book and ‘In Your Own Time’, I received so many messages from women who wished they had done more research before they made their decision.

Different decisions are right for different people and neither I nor any of the lovely people who will share this post are against induction; we are FOR everybody making the decision that’s right for them.

If you’d like more information, I have a whole page of resources and a book on this topic.

You can find details of both at www.sarawickham.com/iol

Yes, you can reshare this post, but please keep our pic, text and credit intact. Please do not put my work/words into your own branding.

10/11/2024

TRAIN WITH US TO BECOME A PREGNANCY YOGA TEACHER

The next YogaBirth 300 hour Pregnancy Yoga Teacher Training Course begins on November 16th, 2024. This course is a true one-of-a-kind. The course leaders are all senior YogaBirth teachers with many years of experience in relevant fields, having been trained by the best yogis and birth specialists in the business. They are dedicated to helping you grow into a confident and knowledgeable teacher who empowers pregnant women to make the birth choices that are right for them.

Reach out to us via the comments, or email us at training@yogabirth.org to find out how you can apply to join the course.

04/11/2024

So true Sara. While for some women induction of labour maybe welcome or necessary, let’s not forget the long term implications of indiscriminate use of synthetic oxytocin in labour management.

On this day in 2021, the NICE guideline on inducing labour was updated.

NICE stands for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. It is the body that provides national guidance and advice to inform health and social care in the UK.

This guideline “concerns the circumstances, methods and monitoring for inducing labour in pregnant women.”

Many people, including myself, remain concerned about some of what is in this guideline.

I wrote about this extensively at the time, and also in my book, In Your Own Time.

The guideline is still in use.

We still receive many enquiries about it.

I mention this today because I wrote a blog post at the time of development, in which I addressed many of the issues with the guideline, and that blog post still exists.

If you're questioning induction, or what you're being told is 'in the guideline', or you want to know why so many people (including many midwives and doctors) are concerned about it, this blog post explains.

I offer links to many blog posts on my own website (www.sarawickham.com) and externally, many with useful references.

You can read my blog post at https://www.sarawickham.com/articles-2/nice-guideline-on-inducing-labour/

Tag anyone who you think needs to see this 😊

21/10/2024

Baby does not turn into a pumpkin🎃 at midnight. Make sure induction of labour is right for you, and not just a convenient preference for the nervous health (s)care provider 🧙‍♀️🎃

Time for my annual reminder!

“Dating pregnancy is not an exact science and there is considerable variation between women.

It is normal that some women naturally have longer pregnancies than others.

The idea that something terrible will happen if a woman remains pregnant for a moment longer than 42 weeks just isn’t true.

The baby doesn’t turn into a pumpkin at midnight.”

It’s so important that women have full information and are able to look at the pros and cons of different courses of action before making the decisions that are right for them.

Part of that is sorting the myths from the facts.

This quote is from my book, “Inducing Labour: making informed decisions."

Find out more about that and my other books and explore birth-related information and decision making at www.sarawickham.com/iol

14/10/2024

https://www.rachelreed.website/rcrp

12/10/2024