Why meditate during pregnancy? What are the benefits for you and your baby? Is there any science to it, or is it just hippy wishful thinking? Here I’ll share a little about my own experiences, but more importantly, what the research and evidence shows us about the effects of meditation during pregnancy and beyond.
I first came to meditation during the journey to conceive our first child. Infertility and ill-health had me reaching for anything that could help, and everywhere I looked meditation kept cropping up. I began by downloading the Headspace app and completing their Take 10 programme of 10 x 10-minute mindfulness based meditations in 10 days. By the end I was hooked and determined to incorporate meditation into my life. I can honestly say it is one of the most powerful and impactful things I have ever done, and I believe it supported me through our IVF treatment, my pregnancy and everything since then! You can read more about my experiences during that time in this blog post. It’s been harder to maintain the practice since having a child, but every little helps, and the semi-regular practice I have now still gives me loads of benefits.
So onto the facts and some of the reasons I LOVE meditation and would highly recommend it during pregnancy (or at any other time). In no particular order…
1. Meditation reduces stress and anxiety
There’s no denying it, pregnancy can be a stressful time and many expectant mothers experience anxiety to some degree. The changes happening to your body, worries about birth, uncertainties about becoming a parent – can all weigh heavy on our minds. Not to mention the delightful hormonal rollercoaster we can experience, feeling joyful one moment and tearful the next!
There is ample research that shows meditation can help us to manage our stress and anxiety, giving us better emotional regulation and, on a chemical level, physically reducing cortisol levels. Cortisol is known as the stress hormone, and we know that it transfers through the placenta to the baby, with some possible negative effects. While we can’t always avoid stress completely in our lives, meditation gives us a brilliant tool to reduce it, manage it, lower our cortisol levels and therefore those of our babies too.
2. Meditation improves experience and outcomes of labour/birth
This is a bit of a huge statement and many of the other reasons listed here contribute to the overall effect of a better birth. Here’s a little about why that might be.
Firstly meditation can help us to unravel and reduce fears around birth. We know that when we feel fear our adrenaline levels rise – and when that happens we stop making oxytocin which is super-critical for birth, and our muscles tense up – which can increase pain during labour. Relaxation and working on removing fears are some of the best things you can do to prepare for a positive birth – and meditation helps us to do both.
We also know that meditation can physically alter our experience of pain – not only changing our perception of it, but also helping our body to produce it’s own natural pain-killers (more on that below – see point 8.)
Finally, mindfulness meditation teaches us acceptance, and as our labour and birth unfolds, being able to accept whatever comes our way non-judgementally can vastly improve our experience of it.
A study in India found that a daily yoga and meditation practice significantly improved birth weight, reduced premature births and lessened the overall medical complications for newborns.
Another study incorporated mindfulness-based preparation into the usual antenatal classes, and found that it “improved women’s childbirth-related appraisals and psychological functioning in comparison to standard childbirth education”. The women who practiced mindfulness in this study also had “lower post-course depression symptoms that were maintained through postpartum follow-up, and a trend toward a lower rate of opioid analgesia use in labor.”
3. Meditation can reduce antenatal and postnatal depression
We know that meditation can be a useful tool for treating depression, and there is encouraging research showing that this applies just as much to depression experienced both during, and after, pregnancy.
On a chemical level, meditation increases the natural production in the brain of seratonin, known by some as the ‘happy hormone’, and key to preventing and treating depression. Combining this with what we know about how meditation can help us to regulate our emotions, reduce anxiety and improve sleep (see below), we can begin to see how it might help with pre & postnatal depression.
This study concluded that “mindfulness training was effective in reducing the symptoms of postpartum depression in new mothers”, and this article explains that meditation techniques have been shown to be as effective as anti-depressants in preventing relapse for those more prone to depression.
4. Meditation helps you bond with your baby
We all lead busy lives; working, caring for dependents, housework, social lives and all the rest can leave us with little time to pause and begin forming those beautiful bonds with our babies as they grow inside us. Taking time to stop and meditate is the perfect opportunity to connect with our baby and begin to create the bonds that will last a lifetime. As well as making the space for us to do this, our babies share all the lovely benefits of meditation that we’re getting. Bringing awareness to your body through meditation can help you to notice your baby’s movements; a short meditation is the perfect time to feel your baby move, send them loving thoughts and begin to bond. This study details how mindfulness meditation can support bonding between mother and baby. Meditation also helps boost your oxytocin levels – which, as well as being critical for labour and birth, is also the most important hormone for maternal (and paternal) bonding after baby is born! ❤
5. Meditation boosts your immunity
During pregnancy our body’s immune system fluctuates. This is why you may end up catching a few more colds during pregnancy, and why pregnant women are offered the flu jab. There’s incredible research however, that meditation can help to boost our immune system and help fight viruses! Another great reason to build it into your routine if you can.
6. Meditation improves sleep
Insomnia is one of the most common complaints of pregnancy. Getting comfortable, staying comfortable, anxiety and needing yet another wee in the middle of the night mean often sleep disturbances aren’t confined to after baby has arrived!
But meditation might hold the key to helping you to sleep a bit better throughout your pregnancy. Another remarkable chemical reaction in the brain that happens during meditation is the increased production of melatonin – the sleep hormone. In addition to meditation helping to manage pain and reduce anxiety – both of which can help us sleep better – this increased melatonin tells your body it’s time to sleep!
And of course, the better rested we are, the better we’re able to cope with waking life, pregnancy, labour and birth.
(Bonus fact: if you’re breastfeeding then melatonin passes from your milk to your baby helping to regulate their sleep and establish their circadian rhythm. We are amazing creatures!)
7. Meditation benefits your baby
Latest research has shown that meditation during pregnancy not only has benefits for you, but also for your baby – both during their gestation and once they’re born. We’ve already learned that reducing our cortisol levels protects our baby from the harmful effects of these, a Chinese study also found that the babies of meditating mothers were more alert when they were born. When researchers returned to the same babies at five months old, “significant findings indicated that infants of the meditation group had more positive responses to new stimuli and “better temperament.”
8. Meditation reduces pain
Pain is something lots of women worry about when it comes to labour and birth. It varies from person to person, and certainly there’s lots of good information out there about how to manage both your expectations and experience of pain during labour. If labour is able to progress naturally our bodies release an incredible cascade of hormones, which include powerful painkillers known as endorphins. These have been said to be several times more powerful than artificial opiates.
The good news? Meditation helps to produce endorphins and dopamine in your body, both of which are natural painkillers. These hormones are effective during labour, but also build up over time, so a regular meditation practice can build a store in your body (and help with pregnancy related pain such as SPD.)
Not only that, but scientists have found that even when the body’s receptors for opiates were ‘switched off’ meditators still experienced a lower perception of pain. And this study found that just 4 days of mindfulness meditation training “reduced pain unpleasantness by 57% and pain intensity ratings by 40%”! Definitely worth a go!
9. Meditation reduces likelihood of premature birth
Linked to the reduction in stress meditation creates, is a reduction in the likelihood of premature birth. Research carried out with mothers who meditated during pregnancy showed that the “preterm birth rate for the meditation group was significantly less than that for the control group”. While more research is needed in this area, it’s promising to see how meditation can support a full-term pregnancy and therefore better health outcomes for the baby.
10. Meditation benefits continue postnatally
As if all that wasn’t enough, the benefits of a meditation practice continue into the postnatal period. I’ve already mentioned how meditation can decrease the likelihood of postnatal depression, it can also help milk production (especially if expressing) and support bonding (all thanks to that lovely oxytocin again), as well as helping new parents to ride the often-stressful wave of the fourth trimester and navigate parenthood!
So there you have it! There is an overwhelming amount of evidence and research out there that show the many benefits of meditating – at any time – but perhaps especially during pregnancy. Below are a few resources for getting started with meditating if you’re keen to give it a go:
Meditation resources
There are loads of brilliant meditation apps available. Some I like are:
> Insight Timer – which is free and has both guided meditations and settings for self-led mediations
> Headspace – very popular and a good introduction. You pay a monthly subscription fee to access all their meditations
> Expectful – is a meditation app specifically for conception, pregnancy and parenthood, there is a monthly fee. They’ve shared a free pregnancy meditation here
> Calm – another meditation and sleep app, you can get a free trial after which there’s a monthly fee
My Facebook page has a free guided meditation video you can watch/listen to. Like the page and look out for more free live meditations coming soon!
I’m running a pregnancy meditation class this Autumn/Winter, with meditations designed specifically to support you during pregnancy, birth and beyond! If you’re local I’d love to see you there – full details here.
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