A gorgeous blog from Certified YogaBellies Teacher for East Kilbride and Clarkston, Annie Perry

The very same day I signed up to become a YogaBellies teacher I had a positive pregnancy test with my second baby. Thinking about the massive step of giving up my secure job in marketing and setting up my own business as a yoga teacher, I said to my husband: ‘Are we doing the right thing doing this and having another baby?’ (already having a 9 month old I might add!). In typical concise, nail-on-the-head fashion he said: ‘This is why we are doing it’. Decision made. I have never looked back.

As a self-confessed ‘birth junkie’- (I cannot get enough of anything to do with pregnancy and birthing) and ‘yoga junkie’ the idea that I could run a business using both these passions still makes me smile. I am completely passionate about the manner in which so many Western women have moved from being supportive of each other in the birth process to ruining it for each other with ‘badge of honour’ type horror stories. The idea that birthing is something to be looked forward to is an alien concept to so many in our culture. Some ladies in my class look at me as if I have two heads when I suggest that they get excited and look forward to their birth. This does make me sad. However, week-on-week I see ladies using yoga to revere, restore and look after their beautiful and blooming pregnant bodies and learning such useful birthing strategies and I see so many of them come round to the idea that their births can be looked forward to and not feared. And so many of these ladies still use yoga when their baby is born to bond with their babies and spend precious time with them in my Mum and Baby class.

I truly love my job. There have been so many highlights of the past nearly two years:
– Achieving my 200 hour yoga teacher qualification;
– Meeting amazing friends and mentors in my fellow YogaBellies teachers;
– Still being there 24/7 for my boys while training and setting up my own business- I have beautiful memories of taking my tiny baby to YogaBellies training in a sling!
– But most of all supporting ladies through so many highs and lows: Beautiful highs- so many special birth stories, new babies, and words of thanks for how the yoga and relaxation I taught has helped ladies’ pregnancy and birthing journeys. Some absolutely devastating lows in the form of stillbirth and miscarriage (my own and other ladies) but the friendships and bonds formed through these lows really are there for life.

Of course it is a job and there have been days where I have been up all night feeding Malachy or sleeping in a toddler bed next to Gabriel and I have to drag myself out the door but never ONCE have I ever finished a class and not enjoyed it or felt I had achieved something teaching it. I would not change it for the world.

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