Becoming a Mother

Myself and my son in 1990

A Transitional Journey

I was given the Active Birth book by Janet Balaskas by a friend when I was pregnant for the first time. That pregnancy didn’t stay, but the book did, and my son was born three years later, on the same day that my first pregnancy ended. When I became pregnant with my son, I attended Janet’s Active Birth and pregnancy yoga classes after discovering that they took place in her home, just a 10-minute walk from my own home.

These classes made a huge difference to my experience of pregnancy. I had been pretty much banned from all my usual yoga classes, as, at that time, teachers were anxious about working with pregnant women in the class. If they let you attend, you had to sit out lots of the yoga with no alternatives given.

What a relief it was then to find Janet’s classes and be able to practice yoga appropriate for my pregnant body, and as a way of preparing for my baby’s birth, throughout the rest of my pregnancy. These two-hour classes also included lots of information on how labour and birth unfold, and the philosophy of Active Birth – by the very woman who coined that phrase. I am forever grateful for these classes.

I went on to have two very positive experiences of birth, one within my local hospital with a domino scheme where I knew my midwife who attended the birth, followed by the home birth of my daughter. Active Birth and yoga preparation played a big part in how they went.

Before I had my children, I worked as an artist, both making and selling work as well as teaching in art college. Art was always my first love since being a child. I left my hometown, Liverpool, to come south and attend art college (not universities back in the 1970s-80s). After gaining my BA, I moved from Canterbury to London and set out on forging a life as an artist, firstly completing an MA in Printmaking and then making and selling work in the years that followed.

I continued to teach and make art for the first years after my son and then daughter were born, but I found this much trickier once there were two children. I also struggled with how, as a mother, I was now perceived in the art world.

This struggle between mothering, making work, and how one was perceived as a mother led me to re-train in my second love – yoga – which I had been passionate about since the age of twenty-one. Like many women, becoming a mother had a transformational effect on all areas of my life.

The training was not your usual yoga course; it was a two-year training at the Active Birth Centre, no longer based in Janet’s home but in wonderful new premises, to become an Active Birth Yoga Teacher. I qualified in 1997 and was then invited by Janet to join her at the ABC to work with women during pregnancy and beyond, holding classes for the pre- and postnatal periods. I worked alongside Janet for the next two decades, running classes for the pre- and postnatal periods, and various trainings.

Trainings in Developmental Baby Massage, Baby Yoga, and Thai yoga massage followed, and I went on to co-direct the centre alongside Janet Balaskas and my wonderful colleague Alice Charlwood. I built up and developed our therapy clinic for women, babies, and the whole family, which was an incredible source of support alongside what we offered in our classes and workshops. Teaching Active Birth philosophy and yoga as a way to work with women through pregnancy and then as they transition into motherhood has brought out a different side to my creativity. I cannot imagine my life without it.

I taught postnatal yoga classes from the start, but after a few years, I started to develop the postnatal programme at the ABC. I wanted to work with mothers and babies in a way that was more appropriate for where mothers were physically and emotionally, and babies developmentally. To both honour and nurture them.

Out of this came New Baby & Me, aimed at mums and babies in the first months after birth, sometimes referred to as the fourth trimester. Mama Yoga classes were the follow-on to New Baby & Me and gave mothers a sense of continuity and ongoing support as their babies grew.

The last 23 years have been quite a journey, and 2020 was another chapter, most notably the closing of the Active Birth Centre and the move onto Zoom, followed by the cancellation of my spring and autumn family retreats in Ibiza, as well as my planned return to Brussels for further trainings with a wonderful group of teachers there. Hopefully, these will all go ahead once we get through this pandemic and discover a new normal.

2020 has been a time for all of us to reflect on what we can offer our communities. It has led me to focus on how I can develop my support for mothers within a society where we all need to better take care of new mothers’ emotional, physical, and mental well-being.

I will be sharing the stories of other mothers here, some of whom are my colleagues. I hope you will find them inspiring, encouraging, and much more. If you feel drawn to share your story, do get in touch.