12-Minute Birth Prep Routine: Engage Your Baby for a Smooth Labor

Birth Preparation, Prenatal

You can prepare for birth by including exercises in your prenatal routine that prepare you to open each pelvic level! The pelvis has three main levels:

The Inlet: The top of the pelvis where your baby will enter or engage during pregnancy or labor
The Midpelvis: the middle of the pelvis where your baby will rotate through from the top to bottom during labor
The Outlet: the bottom of the pelvis where your baby will extend under the pubic bone to be born.

When preparing for baby to ENTER or engage into the pelvis, you want to focus on opening the top of the pelvis, the pelvic inlet. You can accomplish this with:

External hip rotation (wide knees, or knees out, ankles in). This helps to create more space side-to-side in the top of the pelvis.
Posterior pelvic tilt, rounding in the back, helps to create more space front-to-back by moving the sacral promontory (junction of the sacrum and lumbar spine) backward.
Anterior pelvic tilt, arching in the back, helps to change the pubic bone angle to make it easier for baby to enter into the pelvis.

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In this 12-minute birth preparation workout, you will be doing three exercises that focus on opening the TOP of the pelvis! If you want more workouts like this to help you prepare for birth, join our online prenatal fitness programs—our prenatal fitness programs are designed after years of working in-person with prenatal fitness clients to support a strong pregnancy and help you prepare for birth.

Sign up for our newsletter below to sample our different prenatal fitness programs to figure out the best fit for you!

12-Minute Birth Preparation Workout: Help Baby Engage!

In this workout, we walk you through 12 minutes of exercises that focus on helping you create more space in the top of the pelvis. These exercises help encourage your baby to engage into the pelvis!

The first exercise is the supported squat, which involves external hip rotation to widen the top of the pelvis sideways and a posterior pelvic tilt at the bottom to create front-to-back space.

Next, you’ll transition into the 90/90 side camel. This exercise focuses on hip and thoracic mobility, with the hip extension portion stretching the hip flexor to facilitate a posterior pelvic tilt.

Finally, we include pelvic tilts on a birth ball. Pelvic mobility, particularly in the front-to-back direction, is crucial for creating space in the upper pelvis. Both anterior and posterior pelvic tilts can help the baby descend into the pelvis, so we’ve included pelvic tilts to enhance your sagittal pelvic mobility.

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All of our prenatal workout programs are designed to incorporate pelvic opening exercises to prepare you for birth! You do not need to wait until birth to figure out how to create space in your pelvis–join our prenatal fitness programs for daily workouts to prepare you for your birth!

Hi, I just wanted to reach out and say thank you! The prenatal program was so amazing for my pregnancy! I stayed active and pretty much pain free for its entirety. I did a final lower body workout the day I went into labor at 40+1. My first baby and the labor and delivery went amazing! 26 hours of labor on and off, and pushed my baby girl out in a squat with minimal tearing, and achieved the natural delivery dream I had hoped for. A bunch of tips particularly for pushing were so helpful from the childbirth course. Thank you so much for the amazing workouts and knowledge. Excited to dive into the postpartum recovery programming!

I worked out all pregnancy and see myself as a fit person but I am so grateful for your postpartum program because you’re helping me not get ahead of myself and accidentally hurt myself. It’s a steady ramp up but still challenging and I feel like I’m rebuilding my strength in the correct way

MamasteFit’s Prenatal Fitness Course made me feel strong and ready for birth! During pregnancy, I knew I wanted to support my body in the best way possible for birth. As someone who didn’t typically do as many strength-focused workouts, I wanted something I could do from home that was easy to follow. All the workouts in this course made that possible. The demo videos are great for showing how to do the movements and how to modify them. I never felt like I couldn’t do the entire workout at home. I felt stronger as my pregnancy progressed! I appreciated knowing that the movements I was doing were helping me to prepare for birth and beyond. I liked the structure of the workouts and knowing what the focus of the day was. Understanding breathing and taking the time to do that for each workout was helpful. As we moved in to the later stages of pregnancy, the partner workouts were awesome! We liked practicing labor positions and finding what worked for me in a calm manner instead of panicking during actual labor. This helped us to know what my go to positions and counter pressure options would be for labor. I felt the strongest I have going into birth and believe this helped me have a smoother recovery!!

Prepare for Your Birth with MamasteFit Prenatal Fitness Programs

If you want more daily workouts to support a strong pregnancy as you prepare for birth, join our online prenatal fitness programs!

MamasteFit is unique in that we are one of the ONLY prenatal/postnatal training facilities in the United States. Drawing from our extensive experience with in-person pre and postnatal fitness clients, we collaborate closely with physical therapists to refine our programming. As birth workers, we merge our expertise as perinatal fitness trainers and birth professionals to ensure our programs effectively support your birth preparation and recovery.

Our prenatal fitness programs are offered in several formats:

40-Week Prenatal Strength Program on the Teambuildr App:
- Self-paced workouts with concise demo videos, ideal for gym settings and those who prefer traditional workout formats.
- Synchronized with your current week of pregnancy, offering start-anytime flexibility with one-time payment or month-to-month options.
- Full and mini versions available based on your workout time availability.
Prenatal On-Demand Fitness Program:
- Ideal for those who prefer real-time workout videos.
- Synchronized with your current trimester, allowing you to access the trimesters you need.
Prenatal Yoga Classes:
- Join our prenatal yoga program for specialized yoga sessions.
- Synchronized with your current trimester for tailored support!