How having a personal trainer is like giving birth

I have hired a personal trainer. For 30mins twice a week she comes to my house and tortures me. I haven’t done any formal exercise in almost 5 years, so to say I am using muscles I had forgotten about (or perhaps never even knew about) is an understatement! And she doesn’t seem all that sympathetic about it…

Any time I say ‘I can’t do this! No that’s too much’ she replies with ‘yes you can, come on only 5 more, you can do it!’, so I suck it up and do it, screwing my face up and thinking all sort of expletives (my daughter is usually with me so I can’t verbalise them!).

Now I know I am doing this voluntarily – I have paid for her to come do this to me, and I could technically tell her to piss off at any time. But I don’t, because I want to get fit and lose 10kg.

So I lunge and squat and do bicep curls thinking ‘weight loss, fitness, calories falling off, clench that muscle, and breeeeeathhhhhhe’….or sometimes that is just too hard so I just concentrate on breathing in and out

Now how does this relate to giving birth? Well think about it….

Your uterus is ‘exercising’, it is pushing your baby down through your pelvis, and opening up your cervix. It is perfectly natural process but not one we do every day! At some point you may think ‘I can’t do this’, but hopefully you have a good support person with you who can say ‘yes you can, your baby is coming to you with each contraction/surge, come on’ or maybe ‘just breathe’

The only difference is between me and my exercising, and you and having a baby is that you get a baby at the end of your hard work and it will (hopefully) only take you a couple of days at the most. I on the other hand will most likely have to keep doing this for quite a few months!!

Some useful affirmations to use during birth -

‘Each contraction/surge brings my baby to me’

‘My body and baby work in perfect harmony’

‘My body is relaxed and open to allow my baby to descend’

For more affirmations and visualisation techniques consider doing a childbirth education class like HypnoBirthing. For more information on HypnoBirthing click here