Christmas Giveaway: Postnatal programme by Nordic Fit Mama – 6 weeks of self-care for all mamas

I’m super excited to be able to offer you and one of your friends the chance to win the Postnatal Programme by Nordic Fit Mama! Value of the programme is €89/person. Would make a great Christmas present, right?! Head over to my Instagram account for details on how to enter the competition. The competition is open December 12th-18th. Note: The programme is available both in English and Finnish!

If you’ve followed my second postpartum journey, you might remember that I started exercising again after Noah was born by following this exact programme in March this year, and it gave me a strong start to rehabilitating my body and re-building my fitness after two back-to-back pregnancies. I can highly recommend it.

When I was expecting my first baby in 2017 (age 31) I was able to stay very active and to continue strength training at the gym. I was lucky to have a healthy pregnancy and an uncomplicated natural labour. After Maia was born I was keen to get back to the gym as soon as possible. I wasn’t very well informed about pre- and postnatal maternal health but I managed to “bounce back” without causing myself any damage just by listening to my body while training. In hindsight, luck probably played a role as well… My second pregnancy was a different story: In 2019 I was a full-time (60h/week) working mum of a 1.5-year old toddler and I didn’t have the luxury to spend as much time looking after my own wellbeing – I know it should have been a priority but I admit it was not! I did my best to stay active by walking to work and taking the odd prenatal yoga or Pilates class but it wasn’t much. My baby boy was also a bigger baby than my firstborn (birth weight 3kg vs. my daughter’s 2.5kg) which made a big difference towards the end of the pregnancy – so much more pressure and weight on my pelvic floor. So I already knew that the starting point for my second postpartum fitness journey would be different to my first. I’m not talking about baby weight here. I gained about the same amount of weight in both pregnancies. I’m talking about overall cardiovascular fitness, strength and in particular the pelvic floor and core strength. A few days after Noah was born I tried to gently engage my pelvic floor muscles and nothing happened! It was pretty scary. It’s also normal. Weak core and weak pelvic floor and the issues they bring are normal after having a baby, especially if you’ve had two or more pregnancies close together. But although normal, these physical challenges don’t have to be your new norm for the rest of your life!! In most cases it’s possible to fully recover and programmes such as Nordic Fit Mama’s (NFM) postnatal programme help with that. And it’s never too later to start! Whether you had your baby last week, last year or ten years ago, it’s not too late to help your body heal.

Two days after Noah was born

If we lived in my dream world, all new mums would be given a postnatal recovery programme from a physio after having a baby. Sadly this is not the case at least in the UK and although my prenatal care at NHS was great and I have no complaints about my birthing centre at the UCLH, very little attention is given to new mothers after the birth of the baby. There are providers of aftercare but they come at an expense and we need to seek for help ourselves, which we might not do since we don’t necessarily even realise that something is not right because a lot of the postpartum issues aren’t openly talked about.

The term “to bounce back” from pregnancy tends to refer to regaining our figure or losing the baby weight, but I’d argue that more important than fitting into the pre-pregnancy clothes is to make sure we can live our lives without struggling with back pain, incontinence, separated abdominal muscles (diastasis recti) and so on. And even if your goal is to lose the baby weight or to have a six-pack one day, before advancing to more strenuous exercise you need to make sure you have a strong foundation! And if you are left with separated abdominals (which is normal!) after pregnancy, fixing them is the only way to have a flat tummy again. The postnatal programme by NFM is not a weight loss programme as such but it aims to strengthen the muscle groups weakened by pregnancy and labour in a gentle and gradual way. It also specifically aims to heal abdominal separation. And it gets you moving again!!

After my second baby was born I decided to take a kinder, gentler and more gradual approach to getting fit again. I wanted to make sure I won’t do any harm to myself. I even booked an appointment with a women’s health specialist for a postnatal check-up but that’s when we entered the first coronavirus lockdown in England and my appointment was cancelled. But luckily the NFM programme starts by teaching you to test your own abdominals for separation and how to activate and engage the pelvic floor to assess your starting point. I had my GP postnatal check-up at 8-weeks postpartum (no examination, just a quick chat with the GP) and that’s when I looked for, discovered and subsequently started this programme.

Nordic Fit Mama Post Natal Programme (source: nordicfitmama.com):

An award-winning , 6-week online training program, that helps women to recover post-baby body in a safe way with support of trained professionals. The program is designed in Finland, a Nordic country known for the world’s best maternity healthcare and education system. All exercises are medically approved and recommended by gynaecologists, midwives and physiotherapists…

The exercises have been planned so that they rehabilitate separated abdominal muscles and can be performed regardless of the delivery method (vaginal or C-section).

Programme content:

Week 1: Testing and identifying pelvic floor muscles.

Week 2: Testing for separated abdominal muscles (= diastasis recti) and exercises to train deep abdominal muscles.

Week 3: Core, mobility, and personal quality time.

Week 4: Mobility, great posture and being considerate towards yourself.

Week 5: Progressive training and sex after giving birth.

Week 6: Strengthening the core and making full body training part of your everyday life.

I really want to emphasise that I think rehabilitating exercises were important and useful for me even though I had a perfectly healthy and normal pregnancy, a natural and uncomplicated labour, and no significant diastasis recti. I can now run and jump without worrying about wetting myself (yes it was mortifying) and I can manage the physical strain of looking after a baby and a toddler with all the carrying and pushing and running around it involves! Feeling normal “down there” also had a positive impact on our sex life. Oh yes, even parents have sex – ha!

9-months old baby Noah

The programme itself has short low intensity exercise sessions for every day (five days a week) for six weeks. The exercises are simple, and easy in the sense that they won’t get your heart racing and you probably won’t break a sweat (in the first weeks anyway), but at least for me it was pretty humbling how challenging it was to activate and then hold the engagement of the pelvic floor muscles (Kegel exercises) during week one. But every week I felt stronger! Also I have to admit that I’m the worst at doing these kinds of low impact exercises because I’m an adrenaline junkie and I find them so boring! So I really need to commit to a programme to keep doing them. It’s funny how something that’s so easy to do and so beneficial for us, is so easy to skip! Like drinking enough water I’d say (I really struggle with that, too). An active and healthy lifestyle is a lot about creating good habits and routine. They say it takes 30-days to create a habit, so six weeks of carving a bit of me time daily is great for getting back into (or starting) that healthy life!

I liked that the programme included an exercise routine to do while out in the park with the baby in the pram and another one that specifically helps to increase mobility of a tight neck and shoulders (from a lot of carrying and nursing the baby). I repeated these two routines so often I memorised them! It was also good to have someone “tell” me to arrange some time for myself to go for a walk alone, baby-free, because otherwise it would have probably never happened! Self-care is just as much about our mental health as it is about the physical.

The purpose and the execution of all of the exercises are well explained in writing, pictures and also shown in video clips. Overall, in my opinion, there is a great deal of information, a lot that I didn’t know even though I was a second time mum! Also the “embarrassing” topics are covered (wee leaks and pain during sex for example). All the material is available for six months after enrolling in the programme. My only wish is that they would develop an app for the programme because that’d make it even easier to use on the phone! I asked about it and was informed that an app is indeed in the long-term plans but it has not been developed yet.

A lot can happen in a year!

Just to make it clear, this is not a paid partnership. I was kindly gifted the programme as a micro influencer and because I found it so beneficial and feel passionate about maternal health, I wanted to offer you the chance to win the programme as well! Good luck! ❤️

xoxoxo,

Sini

PS. To join the competition, find me on Instagram @fitcitymum and look for a recent post with “Giveaway”.

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