The Headspace Guide To...A Mindful Pregnancy: As Seen on Netflix

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In interviews, participants talked about learning to stop struggling and accept things as they are; they remembered to stop and breathe, and then take conscious action rather than acting out of anger or frustration. In “Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom is Wrong—and What You Really Need to Know”, author Emily Oster explains the difference between a chemical pregnancy and a miscarriage and also explains the risks by age and week of pregnancy in a handy chart. And as long as the flame of expectation is burning, we will continue to experience this point of tension. During and afterward, they were encouraged to meditate for over an hour daily across several different sessions.

This inspiring guide offers encouraging and practical advice that will help you understand your body, embrace change and fully prepare you for becoming a mum. As difficult as the physical sensations can be, I practice feeling gratitude, (and, on rougher days, acceptance) for my physical sensations. When I started reading Mindful Pregnancy (DK, 2020) by Tracy Donegan, there were just a few confirmed cases of COVID-19 in my state of Washington. Based on brain activity, they found that the babies of more-mindful mamas payed less attention to the repetitious, irrelevant sounds—indicating an efficient use of attentional resources. For six weeks, they learned how to work with pain, negative emotions, and difficult social situations.

Obviously, this is more useful for someone actually going into labor but still a good read for a partner as he doesn't deal with some overall anxiety-inducing points in general. For those already meditating, the four meditations at the end of the book are useful for many situations beyond the topic of the book.

The strength of Mindful Pregnancy is its way of illuminating the emotional journey of a pregnant person becoming a parent, and guiding them through that transformation with grace.

Organised trimester by trimester, this audiobook gives you safe yoga, meditation, natural remedies, nutritional and hypnobirthing advice and techniques to match your stage of pregnancy and the development of your baby. The author is recommending use of essential oils and warm baths which might actually be harmful in pregnancy and generally not recommended. Many antenatal classes cover relaxation and breathing techniques and it's good to find out about these, whatever you decide to do when you go into labour. Really love the illustrations in this book as well as it's layout, which flows through very well as the chapters go on. Its weakness is its lack of detailed information regarding the physical transformation, and how it overstates some of the physical benefits related to a mindful practice in pregnancy.