Your baby has arrived! Congratulations!
Those first weeks and months after your baby arrives quite often become a flurry of visitors, adjustments, lack of sleep and chaos! What if there was a place you could go, just you and your baby, where you can shut everyone and everything out, and focus on recovery, bonding and getting to know your baby?
If this is what you are looking for, then a mum and baby yoga course might be just the thing!
Mum and Baby yoga is the perfect way to focus on you and your health and recovery while spending time with your baby, and the benefits of mum and baby yoga speak for themselves. Not only do you both get to enjoy some gentle tailored exercise, but you also get to spend time with other mums and babies who are going through all the changes and adjustments to family life you are too!
Besides the opportunity to get out of the house and enjoy an actual adult conversation with other mums, all while spending time with your baby, here are my top 5 benefits of Mum and Baby yoga for babies.
Benefits of Mum and Baby Yoga for Babies #1: Time to bond with your Baby
Time spent doing Mum and Baby yoga is time well spent bonding with your baby. Traditional yoga poses are adapted to allow you to perform them while holding and cuddling your baby.
Yoga helps you both to relax and provides you with valuable bonding time on a level that you would not experience under normal circumstances.
The session involves a lot of holding and touching your baby which in turn triggers the nervous system helping your baby to feel calm, secure and safe with you. The entire session is planned around you and your baby in a nurturing, gentle fun and relaxed atmosphere.
Benefits of Mum and Baby Yoga for Babies #2: Aid with Babies Digestion
If you have a colicky baby or if your baby has regular problems with indigestion, yoga could be just what your baby needs.
The poses and stretches that are used in mum and baby yoga classes are designed to relieve constipation and windy babies as well. It is not uncommon for babies to feel instant relief from the baby yoga and to immediately feel happier and more content, and when you have a happy content baby, you have a happier, more content mama too!
Benefits of Mum and Baby Yoga for Babies #3: Baby Yoga can help Baby to Sleep Better
Some babies will simply enjoy more sleep that others – and for those lucky parents that means extra sleep for you too! But for most parents, sleep it seems, has to be earned!
Introducing a gentle, soothing routine before sleep can encourage your baby to feel secure and more relaxed, not to mention less irritable and restless.
Incorporating some yoga into their sleep time routine will help relax and calm baby while also give you some special bonding time before ending the day leaving you and baby feeling more content. Many parents have said that practicing mum and baby yoga with their babies often results in them settling quicker and sleeping for longer.
Benefits of Mum and Baby Yoga for Babies #4: Social Interaction
Mum and baby yoga classes are specifically designed to create a calm, peaceful environment for young babies to become exposed to and embrace social interaction with other adults and children. Typically, classes include playful exercises and soothing music which encourages babies relax and interact with the other babies in the group in a fun and secure manner.
Babies who are encouraged to interact with others from a young age are likely to adapt to bigger life changes later on in life such as starting school. They will have more confidence and be able to make new friends with ease.
Benefits of Mum and Baby Yoga for Babies #5: Physical and Emotional Advantages
Research consistently shows that babies and children who are active are likely to be happier and more balanced individuals.
Starting your baby on a pathway of healthy, gentle exercise can lead them towards a lifetime of pleasure and enjoyment from activity, which will help reduce the risk of obesity, diabetes and many other health issues that can be avoided by regular exercise.
Yoga for babies helps with co-ordination and motor skills as well as muscle development and balance – exactly what all babies need to develop during their first year. The bonding and connection they experience with you as they adjust to the big wide world is reassuring and confidence building. Who knows, you may even be instilling them with a life-long love for yoga, that you can both continue enjoying together!