It feels like ages ago when I was pregnant, 15 years ago now.
I was lucky enough to have quite a nice and easy pregnancy, but I felt a bit alone. Until I started antenatal classes, I didn’t even know any other pregnant woman near me. Then I only learnt later, when my daughter started school, that there were actually 3 a few doors down the road!
I didn’t know about NCT courses at the time but I found the NHS classes quite useful. I met some lovely mums with whom we still catch up with families from time to time. With one of this family, we even went on holiday together this year!
Even though I normally enjoy a nice walk in the park, I’m kind of lazy, definitely not a gym person, so I didn’t attend any pregnancy yoga or pilates classes that probably would have helped a lot with back pain. Towards the end of the pregnancy I suffered from PGP (pelvic girdle pain) which really slowed me down. I couldn’t walk for more than 10 minutes and felt like a turtle, stairs were a nightmare, and rolling out of bed (and you know how often you have to get up at night to pee) was torture. I was referred to a physiotherapist, who taught me a few exercises and a bit about posture.
Then my lovely girl Amy was born, and breastfeeding was the biggest struggle I had to face. Again, I didn’t have many contacts back then, so I trusted midwives and health visitors: all was fine, it’s just baby position, it takes time . . . in the meantime I tried nipple shields, tits in the air, silver cups, and of course lanolin cream, all to try and heal those horrible cuts.
A couple of weeks later, the midwife said I had thrush, and my girl wasn’t growing as she should have.
Basically, I needed better help! That struggle is part of why I later wrote Milk Tales, if you’re going through something similar, you might find some comfort there.
Through my work as a newborn photographer,working with pregnant women in London, I’ve since met wonderful people who would have surely helped me back then. Looking back, here are a couple of people I still point my clients to when questions come up.
Nadia Rafaat
Nadia is a lovely mum of 4, a yoga teacher specialising in pregnancy, and a birth doula. She has taught pregnancy yoga to the women of Wandsworth, Battersea and Clapham for the last 20 years. Her weekly Yoga and Mindfulness for Pregnancy and Birth course is a local pregnancy institution. In her comprehensive course, you can expect to learn meditation, yoga postures, how to work mindfully with fear and pain, self-soothing skills to stay calm, and much more. For first-time mums especially, I think this is pure gold.
She also now runs online classes if you can’t make it in person, and a retreat twice a year on Eel Pie Island in Twickenham, which sounds like exactly the reset any expecting mum deserves.
She’s a qualified antenatal teacher who ran classes for the NCT and worked as a breastfeeding counsellor, and I had great feedback from clients who used her service. While I was pregnant, I was focused on the birth itself, probably as most first-time mums are, and overlooked breastfeeding entirely.
I would have given everything to have had Julie close to me at that time.
Madia Rashid
After 10 years of working for the NHS and with two small children, Madia decided to set up her own Clinic. Her mission, to provide access to Physiotherapist led women’s health services and expertise, via her educational-pilates courses for mums-to-be in small groups.
Whilst also helping women suffering from pregnancy-associated pain, both during or after birth. She would definitely help me with my PGP problem on a more personal level than what the hospital did!
