Emma

Becoming a mum is an exciting, life changing experience. There are so many new, foreign things happening and adjustments being made that physical changes can sometimes be overlooked and put in the ‘I will deal with that when I have time’ basket (mmmm when does that time come?). We all know that the human body goes through some dramatic changes during pregnancy, some we can see and others we cannot. Postural changes, such as increased curvature of the spine, are inevitable as the human body accommodates a larger belly. Also, joints and ligaments become loose due to the hormone ‘relaxin’, this creates more space in and around the pelvis, however, also impacts the whole body. Let’s face it, baby never gets any lighter, so with all the lifting, carrying and sitting in strange positions to accommodate a child who is finally sleeping, our bodies can develop patterns of movement that are not ideal and cause joint pain and muscle inflammation. With so many changes in routine with new bub coming along, it is natural to prioritise everyone else’s wellbeing over our own ‘recovery’. Consequently, mother’s often experience ongoing pain and other issues that are never completely resolved. This can lead to long term back, neck, shoulder and other joint pain and muscle soreness. Correctly exercising the body is the key to regaining alignment, mobility and core strength. Incorrectly exercising can exacerbate issues and lead to those long-term chronic impacts. One ideal form of exercise is reformer Pilates under the supervision of well-trained instructors. The key focus of Pilates is to strengthen the core muscles that support the spine, in particular the Transversus Abdominus (think, baby bump) and the Obliques (think, tapered waistline) as well as strengthening the Pelvic Floor (!). The Transversus Abdominus and Obliques are large core muscles that wrap around the body connecting the spine, ribs and pelvis. Pilates also strengthens the gluteal muscles that provide stability to the lower back, pelvis and knees. While also strengthening the muscles of the arms, legs and torso, reformer Pilates is resistance training, the equivalent of going to the gym and lifting weights! We chat to Joanne Thiele, Instructor and Owner Studio Pilates SA about Pilates and the benefits pre and post pregnancy: – Is Pilates like yoga? What is the difference? Pilates and yoga are similar in a number of ways, both seek to unite the mind and body bringing strength and flexibility to the muscles and joints. The key difference with reformer Pilates is the focus on building lean muscle through the use of the machine to provide resistance and also to align the body. Pilates focuses on pelvic and spinal alignment, which in turn improves posture and can alleviate aches and pains brought on by our daily lives – sitting at computers, driving etc. – How is Pilates different from lifting weights for strength training? Pilates develops the deep muscles of the back and abdomen to support your spine, and focuses on breathing to promote better posture. The reformer helps to maintain very specific positions to target specific muscles. In the gym it’s easy for bigger, stronger muscles to take over whereas with reformer Pilates, your instructor can help you get an all over body workout, working both sides of the body equally while also balancing muscles through the front and back of the body. Pilates does not focus on ‘bulking’ up the muscle but rather building long lean muscles that are strong and flexible. Reformer Pilates classes are usually around 40 minutes, which means a quick, effective, targeted workout on one machine. You don’t need to wait for different equipment or work out what exercises to be doing to get a great all-over-body workout. – How many days a week should I do Pilates? If you can only do Pilates once a week this is better than nothing, however, if you are able to do Pilates 3 to 5 times per week you will experience the rapid transformational power of the movements building and maintaining strength and flexibility very quickly. This will also depend on what other physical exercise or work you are doing. Pilates is very complementary to other activities helping to bring balance back to the body used to working some muscles more than others (golf, tennis, cycling, running etc.) – Can I do pilates whilst I am pregnant? Yes, maintaining strength during pregnancy will not hurt mother or baby; however, there are some muscles that we recommend should not be strengthened / challenged during pregnancy such as the inner thighs and some abdominals such as the rectus abdominis. There are many others that can be continued to be strengthened, especially the glutes (to maintain pelvis stability and avoid back pain) and upper body strength (to aid in all the lifting and carrying that will be required when baby comes along). Pregnancy can also limit some positions such as lying on your front and back. The reformer provides an extensive number of exercises that can be continued up to full term. One of the great benefits of Pilates is how it can help with spinal and pelvic alignment. This is particularly beneficial for pregnant women and women who have just given birth, as the physical changes that come with pregnancy can put a strain on your alignment. During pregnancy, Pilates can help to maintain your level of fitness, strengthen your pelvic muscles and also promote efficient body mechanics. These are ideal as your body prepares for the strain of childbirth, the strengthened pelvic floor will also make it easier for mothers-to-be to give birth. And after the pregnancy, Pilates can help you to recover and return to your pre-pregnancy body. – How quickly will i see results from Pilates? We offer an introductory pack of classes that involves 6 classes over a 2 week period, this frequency and time period is enough to experience a difference. Clients report feeling a difference after only 1, 2 or 3 classes. This is due to working muscles

Rebecca Morse: Our Little Picassos “The most impressive dedication to early childhood artistic preservation came from a mother who photographed each piece and transformed it into a coffee table book.” Do you keep your children’s artwork / craft projects / school books? If so, how much of it, and for how long? I am guilty of sticking it on the fridge next to the bills for a couple of weeks and then sheepishly discarding it when the next abstract masterpiece of paddle pop sticks and feathers comes home from school. I’m not a complete monster, some get kept, anything that displays artistic merit I may be able to draw on if the child responsible chooses to pursue a career in the arts. Also, anything with a handprint. Because how cute, how little etc. Handmade Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and birthday cards are kept. You know, the ones that say Mummy’s Favourite Drink: wine. Well baby girl, it’s highly likely that without wine you would not have been conceived, nor would Mummy have survived being a Mummy with her sanity intact thus far. And when I say they are “kept” I mean they are randomly shoved in a cupboard to one day be transferred into a neatly-labelled storage box. When I have the spare time. Lol. I wasn’t always like this. There was a gradual loss of sentimentality from the first through to the third child. When the eldest was born I kept her ultrasound pictures, her hospital wristband, the first angelic blonde curl cut from her head. They were glued proudly and dutifully into a baby book. I purchased small canvases and invited a clucky friend to my house for a “crafternoon” during which we dipped the precious newborn’s feet and hands into paint and made them into little artworks to be displayed around the home. I took photos of her in the bath, had them enlarged, and put them on the wall above said bath. I went to Spotlight and bought fabric covered in farm animals and stretched it into artwork to decorate her nursery walls. Mid-Twenties-First-Time-Mum Bec had waaaaaay too much time on her hands. When the second child was born there was no time for a baby book. But by this stage the digital photo book had been invented therefore when I had an attack of the guilts about the lack of documentation of her life, I whipped up a quick book and considered that box ticked. There were no personalised decorations on our walls, in the bathroom or indeed in her nursery. Then there was the third child. The third child may have reason to suspect her childhood did not occur. Lucky Instagram came along in her toddler years or there may well have been little evidence of her very existence. As for decorating her nursery. Welllll she didn’t really have one. Her hand-me-down cot was placed in the study nook outside our bedroom and when she was old enough to move into a Big Girl’s Bed she shared a room with her older sibling. Builds resilience. We discussed on radio my penchant for Marie Kondo-ing my kids’ artwork and school books and I’ll admit the majority of our callers made me feel mildly shamed. One kept big storage boxes under their bed full of every piece of childhood creativity their offspring had ever brought home. Another laminated artworks to save them from disintegration into the future. (Early-Twenties-First-Time-Mum Bec really wanted a laminator) The most impressive dedication to early childhood artistic preservation came from a mother who photographed each piece and transformed it into a coffee table book. And here’s me tiptoeing out to the recycling bin at the end of the school year dumping books containing pages and pages of long division and handwriting practice that document crucial stages of my children’s developmental progress. Mother. Of. The. Year. But here’s the thing. Here’s why I set my sentimentality benchmark relatively low. Would I now, in my forties, want to leaf through all of my primary school memories? If I’m honest, no I would not, and had my parents gone to the trouble of holding onto such prehistoric relics, I would just feel guilty turfing them out after a quick nostalgic perusal. Unless I’d made a Mother’s Day card exposing my mum’s alcoholic beverage of choice circa 1980. That, I’d still like to see. @rebeccamorse10

Your Wild Imagination! After a successful crowd-funding campaign, Adelaide mum and creator of Wild Imagination, Brooke Davis has now launched her nature play book for kids titled ‘Your Wild imagination’. A great Christmas pressie idea if you ask us! From 3+ years old the book is for anyone big or small who wishes to be inspired. It includes over 20 nature play activities that can be transformed by your own unique creativity. Just one of the book’s many gorgeous images is featured on our cover. As parents we are always looking for ways to avoid our kids spending too much time behind a screen. Brooke created Wild Imagination with the intention for kids to have more green time and less screen time, while allowing their imaginations to run wild and free. We spoke to Brooke about her new book and inspirations: Did you do much Nature Play as a kid? Even from my earliest memories, I have always loved nature play. Climbing trees, exploring the outdoors, making potions and mud pies, and even fishing occasionally! It’s not an uncommon story – that my strong connection with nature was lost somewhere along the path of growing up. But when I had my own children I began to realise how different their childhood was to mine – too much screen time and not enough green time. So when I started to take steps to change that, I realised that many parents were in the same boat. In 2016 I established Wild Imagination, which is a nature play program that has seen about 20,000 kids enjoy nature play with us. Tell us a bit about the content of the book? What will we find inside? It’s called Your Wild Imagination because the activities are open ended and the images are there to ignite your imagination, not prescribe how it should look in the end. The book has more than 20 activities, plus school holiday projects and is best suited to kids aged 2 – 10 years but is for anyone who would like more nature and play in their lives. Some of the activities you can expect are flower crowns, wood whittling, magic wands, nature masks and fabric printing. It is filled with beautiful images and easy to follow instructions. There is a real focus on sustainability, so you won’t need to go out and buy a bunch of materials to get going. Mostly, you will be able to use what you find in your garden or local park, combined with some items from your home or a secondhand shop. Measuring 15cm x 23cm, it’s the perfect size for little hands and fits well into a kids backpack. How did you go about getting it off the ground? Publishing a book was a daunting task, so I sought the help of others by running a crowdfunding campaign to raise enough money to print the first run of books. We reached our target with a few days to spare and sold about 900 books in the process. I’m so grateful to those early supporters for helping to get it published! What’s next for Wild imagination? We’re taking a break from running our own school holiday programs for the foreseeable future, but instead we’re partnering with councils, schools and events to bring nature play to Adelaide kids. You’ll find us doing nature play activities and selling the book at various events around Adelaide (check our website for dates). Next year I’ll begin working on the second book, which has more nature play activities for primary school aged kids. Longer term, there will be more books for different ages and interests, including for tweens and adults. wildimagination.com.au @wildimaginationnatureplay

By 
Olivia Williams 
 A little over a year ago, I lost my mum. And she wasn’t just a regular mum, she was a cool mum. She was my first and oldest friend, my staunchest supporter, the person who would always understand my left-of-centre jokes or my slightly inappropriate sarcasm. In fact, she’s probably the reason why I even make those jokes or am inappropriately sarcastic in the first place. Those things were our love language. The foundation of our lifelong friendship, forged in belly laughs and jokes only the two of us understood. In the year that’s passed since, a lot of things have changed, and yet… a lot of things have also stayed the same. In the days and weeks immediately following her death, my grief was visceral; tangible. I wore it with me everywhere I went. I lay with it awake every night on the couch mindlessly watching late night reruns of 90-day Fiancé. It rested on my shoulders in everything I did and it resonated through every word I spoke. The loss of her was an incalculable blow that had left me breathless and without anchor. In that year, I took my grief to the same place over and over again; the gym. This wasn’t entirely off-brand for me; in my adult life I’ve morphed into one of those irritating activewear clad mums who talk about exercise all the time when literally nobody asked (sorry friends), but this new motherless version of myself attacked it with a new intensity and focus. Somehow, I thought if I just kept running… maybe I could outrun my grief. With every foot strike on the treadmill, maybe I could get one step further away from feeling like my entire world was falling apart, from the constant wondering how… if there was no her, I could still be me. If I could just run, I wouldn’t have to face the devastation that was waiting to envelop me in every other facet of my life. It wasn’t grief making me feel like I couldn’t come up for air, it was running. It wasn’t the loss of her making every muscle in my body ache, it was running. I didn’t wake up every morning hurting because I was hurting, it was running. That’s what I told myself. I ran so fast, and so far, that I broke. Literally. What was initially a little niggle of discomfort in my leg, became over the course of a month, searing agonising pain. But still, I kept running. When I finally relented and took myself to the doctor because I could barely walk (and yet…was still running), an MRI revealed a significant stress fracture to my fibula from overuse. We laugh about it now, because if anyone was going to break their own leg, it would be me, but in my mind, it seemed like the end of the earth at the time. Running gave me a time to be sad, sometimes sweat and tears would become one as I pounded stride after stride on the treadmill. Running gave me a purpose, a place to go where it was just me and my grief, and no one to tell me it was time to start finding another way to move forward. But that’s what I had to do, find another way. Because over the months since, when I could no longer spend hours convincing myself I could somehow manage to outrun my sadness, I realised a few things. Grief is a marathon, but it’s not a race; it’s a journey. There’s no medal at the end of it, because it doesn’t end. There’s no finish line. You can’t win it; it’s borne of loss. As the dust I was kicking up day after day settled, it dawned on me. The day mum died was not just a date on a calendar. It was the day when my very existence changed forever. The death of your mother, they say, is the first sorrow wept without her. But, what I’ve had to realise as I’ve been so tightly grasping the last vestiges of the woman that loved me like no one else ever has, is that she’s not really gone. I’m not living my life without her in it. She’s here in so many ways. She’s here in the blue of my son Henry’s eyes. She’s here in the beautiful art my daughter Tilly quietly creates. She’s here in the stubborn, wicked, infectious sense of humour of my littlest girl, Rosie. She is here in the words that I write, and in the unconditional love that I know how to give. So maybe my morning runs, shouldn’t be mourning runs anymore. Because in so many ways, grief is just another word for love. I can’t outrun that; and I don’t want to. @eeniemeeniemineymum