We’ve added several new workshops for expecting families (including one for siblings-to-be!) and we think you’re going to be super excited about them. Check out Blooma’s upcoming offerings, then stretch out a bit and try one!

• Bright Baby Workshop for Expecting Parents — We’ll explore current brain research and the role touch and early movement play in your baby’s brain development. Learn what products and practices can foster healthy brain development as well as what very common products can hinder optimal brain development in the first year of life. Join us for a relaxed afternoon in anticipation and preparation for your beautiful bright baby to arrive! All expecting families are welcome. When: March 3, 2-5 p.m. Cost: $55. Sign up here.

Join Welcome Baby Care for "Baby, Body & Bonding."

• Baby, Body & Bonding for Expectant Parents — Join Blooma and Welcome Baby Care for an afternoon of discussion, education, and fun! This workshop will give you a feeling of preparedness and insight into those first few weeks with your baby. We’ll discuss:  postpartum plans, diapering, bathing, back to work, physical and emotional changes, and support (and why it’s SO important). Make it a relaxing date with your partner. When: 3/4, 1-3:30 p.m. Cost: $30 per couple. Sign up here.

• Great Siblings Class — Becoming a big brother or big sister is so exciting! Doula and childbirth educator Karen Bruce will lead children and their parents through child-friendly videos and interactive activities that teach children the size and sounds of a newborn, how a baby behaves, and how brothers and sisters can interact with and help with the new baby. Parents will attend workshop with the children. This is not a drop-off class. When: 3/10, 12:30-1:30 p.m. Cost: $30 per family. Sign up here.

Love,

Alisa, Sarah & the women of Blooma

After attending regular prenatal yoga classes at both Blooma’s Minneapolis and St. Paul locations, this mama went into her birth knowing “how to relax, how to breath, and how to believe in myself and my body.” Congratulations, Sarah!

Love,

Alisa, Sarah & the women of Blooma

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{By Sarah}

On the morning of our baby’s birth, I woke up to find a spot of clear fluid on our sheets. I investigated and found out that you could leak small amounts of amniotic fluid in the days and hours leading up to labor.

Having no other signs of labor, I left for Corrine’s yoga class. Class felt great, as usual, and I set off for home blissed out.

During the drive home my back felt uncomfortable, like menstrual cramps. By the time I arrived home at 11:30 a.m. the “cramps” were a regular occurrence, and I was starting to need to take deep breaths through them. Nick was set to have lunch and then play Frisbee golf with friends so we consulted and decided that we would both have our phones on, but continue with our lives as usual and ignore this early labor as advised by Sarah Longacre during our couples birthing class.

I told Nick that it was probably time to finish a project for school I had been working on as I was feeling a sense of urgency about completing it. I sat and worked at my computer for a half hour before I felt hungry.

I made lunch for myself and watched an episode of “Friday Night Lights.” During the next hour the contractions continued to come regularly, about every five minutes. I laid down and tried to relax.

Nick swung by between lunch and Frisbee golf to check in and give me a hug and tell me, “You’re awesome.” At this point, I needed to breath through the contractions and was starting to find I wanted to lean on door jams, go on all fours, or move my hips in puppy pose.

I could hear Sarah Longacre telling me to relax my jaw and Cynthia Levine asking, “Where else can you soften?” during each one. The contractions were still regular at five minutes but the pain in my back was getting more intense with each one.

Eventually, I badly wanted Nick back with me. He abandoned the game at hole 11, around 2 p.m., and was cheered on by his friends as he ran back to the truck to come home.

When Nick got back, he finished packing our bags for the hospital between contractions and I stayed on all fours on a mat on the floor, throwing up a couple of times.

After a little while of that, we continued our labor plan by starting to watch “Miracle,” the movie about the 1980 U.S. Hockey Team (I have a thing for inspiring sports movies). We only got through the first montage before I was not watching the movie at all because the contractions were getting too intense.

At that point I wanted to go to the hospital because I wanted to be able to handle the transition to the hospital while I could still talk between contractions. Nick walked me down to our truck where I had another contraction before climbing in on my knees facing the back and gripping the seat.

During the drive to Fairview Riverside hospital, I had three contractions. In the elevator on the way to The Birth Place I had another contraction just as the door opened to the main lobby. Someone standing there would have seen me moaning while holding the elevator handrail.

Knowing I was not going to get out of the elevator at that moment, Nick pressed the button to go down a floor, and we came back up again, the doors opening at the end of my contraction this time.

Once we were checked in at The Birth Place, at about 5:30 p.m., our awesome nurse, Karrie, hooked me up to the fetal monitor in our labor room. John, our midwife, came to check me after that and we discovered I was 5 centimeters dilated.

I then decided to labor in the bathtub, where I could relax. As the contractions got more intense Nick helped me breathe by taking deep breaths with me. He told me I was amazing and strong. He also encouraged me to move my vocalization into a lower register so that I moaned and yelled instead of screamed.

After each contraction, Nick made sure I drank water and told me I was doing a great job. Eventually I wanted to get out of the tub because it was getting cold and I wanted to get checked to see how I was progressing. Nick helped dry me off and get a dry shirt on to warm up.

Back on the bed on all fours, I felt something between my legs. I asked urgently, “What is coming out between my legs?!” (Afterwards, I found out that Nick answered to himself, “A baby,” but he chose not to say so at the time.)

When I felt between my legs, there was a slimy water-balloon like protrusion. John checked and confirmed that it was my amniotic sac. During the next contractions the water-birth tub was brought in and filled as I labored on my hands and knees on the bed. Just before I entered the tub John broke the water sac. He checked me and I was dilated 8 centimeters.

In the birthing tub, I was comfortable on my knees with my legs spread and leaning against the side of the tub where I could hold onto Nick’s arms during contractions. John inquired if I did yoga since this position looked like it required some flexibility (!).

In between contractions the room was supremely quiet and peaceful. I rested with my head on the side of the tub next to Nick, he rehydrated me, and John and Karrie sat quietly on the other side. It seemed as if everyone was meditating around a pool.

Every once in awhile Nick would make me open my eyes and look at him as he told me how great I was doing, and with excitement in his eyes he said, “You’re birthing our baby!”

Knowing I was in transition I joked, “I’m dying.” After more contractions that caused me to yell from pain, I said more genuinely, “This SUCKS.” Despite this pronouncement, I didn’t feel like I couldn’t do it— I just felt how hard it was, how much pain I was in during contractions, and how I didn’t want the next one to come, but still I knew I could do it.

I think Nick’s encouragement, classes at Blooma, and the birth stories shared at Blooma were responsible for this attitude. After a while I felt the urge to start bearing down and begin pushing. John encouraged me to do so for a bit before he checked me to find I was fully dilated and almost completely effaced.

When the real pushing began, I didn’t really understand how to hold my breath to push down, or not push my legs when they were held up. We tried a few positions including squatting, on my knees, and with John and Karrie holding up my legs while Nick held my arms, letting the water support me.

This last position was the most effective and eventually I learned how to use holding the breath and use my abdominal muscles to effectively push.

Nick, John, another midwife, and Karrie cheered through each contraction, “Go! Push! Down!” When the baby crowned it burned horribly. It took a few contractions to go from crowning to getting the baby out, but in between John told me to feel it’s head—I reached down and felt my baby’s hair. During the second-to-last contraction a lot of blood came out during pushing.

Finally our baby came out (!) and was laid on my chest. There were a few sweet moments of just looking and feeling our baby. Then someone remembered to check the sex—Nick lifted it up and declared that we had a baby girl!

Madeline was born at 11:05 p.m. after an hour and a half of pushing and 12 hours after contractions began.

After I was helped with our baby from the tub to the bed, we had that amazing time of just looking, touching, and admiring her.

She was quiet from the water birth, a fact that concerned the nurse since she wanted a vigorous cry. Nonetheless, Madeline warmed up while on my chest and after a visit to the warming table. Nick and I held Madeline and rejoiced in our healthy baby girl.

During my exam it was discovered that I had torn significantly during birth— fourth degree lacerations that included my sphincter, vaginal wall, and rectum. John called in the obstetrician on call, Dr. Olson, to do my stitching. Dr. Olson was excellent in communicating what the tears might mean for recovery, and my options for repair in terms of pain relief, stitching in the room vs. the operating room etc.

We finally decided that I would get a spinal (intrathecal injection) in addition to local anesthetic and would go to the operating room.

So, ironically, after a natural labor and birth I got Pitocin to help with bleeding, a spinal with morphine in it, and went to the operating room.

Nick and Madeline went to the nursery for her first bath and exam. John held me up in sitting position while I got my spinal, and I think I bruised his arms I was gripping so hard. Luckily the medication worked incredibly quickly, and seconds after I felt relief from the pain.

On the operating table, I once again used Sarah’s advice and meditated by counting breaths in and out. This enabled me to relax enough to fall asleep through the stitching despite having my arms and legs spread wide on the operating table. Nick and Madeline rejoined me in the post-op room a little after 2 a.m. where we nursed, dozed, and admired our baby girl some more.

Since Madeline’s birth, life has been a whirlwind of hosting excited visitors and figuring out how to take care of all of Madeline’s needs while still eating and sleeping ourselves. I am so very thankful for my amazing baby girl. She is perfect and we are both completely smitten.

Thanks to all of the mamas who were beside me on their mats. I appreciated the community of pregnant women throughout my pregnancy. Knowing that I wasn’t alone in having calf cramps in the middle of the night made a big difference.

I am so, so grateful to all of the instructors at Blooma—Sarah, Corrine, Cynthia, and Laura, in particular, for teaching me how to relax, how to breath, and how to believe in myself and my body.

I knew I could not control everything that happened at our daughter’s birth, but I also knew I could control my breath and my thinking (or lack thereof).

As a new mama, I had gone from being anxious and nervous about labor a few months ago, to feeling confident that I could handle whatever this birth would throw at us. Both Nick and I had the tools to stay positive and relaxed while bringing our baby into the world. Thank you.

Sarah

Blooma has teamed up with Alexia Strawn Photography to help out with her win-a-newborn-photo-shoot promotion.

Prenatal yoga mamas, all you have to do is submit a snapshot of your pregnant belly and get your friends and family to vote. The bump with the most votes wins! Full details on how to enter are below.

In addition to a newborn photo shoot, the winner will also receive a long-sleeved Blooma T-shirt and one class pass good for any yoga class of your choice, whether Prenatal yoga, Bring Your Own Baby yoga (BYOB), Take It Easy yoga or Vinyasa Flow. The pass will be honored at any of Blooma’s locations, including Minneapolis, St. Paul, or Shakopee.

Choose your photo soon — the deadline to enter is Feb. 28. Good luck! We know there are A LOT of cute bellies out there!

Love,

Alisa, Sarah & the women of Blooma

It was late afternoon the first time I inserted Whitney Houston’s debut cassette into my boom box, cued the tape to just the right spot and with trembling fingers, dialed Tommy’s number. He was the guy every girl in my fourth grade class dreamed of, the boy with the big brown eyes and tousled brown hair.

Intensely shy, I never planned on revealing my crush. Whitney would do it for me.

“Hello?” he’d answer.

Press play! Press it fast, I’d think, fingers fumbling for the chunky boom box button.

“How will I know if he’s thinking of me? I try the phone but I’m too shy, can’t speak,” she sang. Then — quick! — I’d hang up, hoping he’d never figure out who I was. Ah, what we could get away with in the days before caller ID.

Whitney’s song “How Will I Know? (If he really loves me)” gave words to the prepubescent feelings I dared not share aloud. It was 1985, the year her debut album hit the scene. Her dance tunes, filled with hokey synthetic beats, and ballads saturated with sentimentality, inspired us. I was an impressionable young girl who found escape in pop radio hits. Whitney, along with Madonna and Janet Jackson, provided the backdrop for a jillion dance and singing sessions in my bedroom. Often called “The Voice,” she was so much more than just a voice to those of us, especially girls, who grew up in the 1980s.

Fast forward 27 years, and today she’s being buried, delivered by a gold hearse. Twenty-seven years later and I’m a married woman with two young kids.

Admittedly, I hadn’t thought about Whitney Houston in at least a decade — maybe two. But like the day Michael Jackson died, the pop songstress’s death inspired a nostalgic music marathon in our household, educating my kids about Whitney as a once-upon-a-time pop music superstar.

Naturally, I marked the event last weekend by blaring “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” while whooping it up in the kitchen with my 3-year-old son and 11-month-old baby girl. While I’d like to think that my musical taste have vastly improved since my elementary and middle school days, Whitney’s greatest hits streamed through Spotify, shocking me every time I remembered, word-for-word, the lyrics to yet another Whitney tune I hadn’t heard in years.

Then there it was. Arguably one of the sappiest girl-power songs of all time: “Greatest Love of All.”

Transported back to my elementary school bedroom with its blue and white flowered wallpaper, my heart felt a rush of pure happiness and confidence that was my then 9-year-old self. Despite its melodramatic corniness, Whitney gave me and my generation of girls what I hope another musician can give my daughter one day — an anthem to feel good about herself.

It was the perfect age for “Greatest Love of All,” to blare through the headphones of my bright yellow Sony Walkman. “Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all,” she sang with such conviction that I truly believed it. I had to learn it then, whether Tommy liked me back or not (he didn’t), and years later through countless break-ups.

Are there any such heartfelt odes to believing in yourself for today’s little girls? Maybe Christina Aguillera’s “Beautiful” or for any gender, Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.”

Last weekend, dancing with my kids, I felt that same burst of energetic joy that comes so easily when you’re young — before awkward adolescence sets in, before tween and teenage influences somehow snatch away the knowledge of how fabulous you really are.

Which songstress will my daughter — who turns 1 tomorrow — one day play over and over through her iPod earbuds and glean life lessons from? Who will inspire her to spend hours dancing in her bedroom as a tween, letting the music fill her heart as she dances to her own unique groove? Who will she sing along with when she has those first feelings for a boy?

These days when I need a feel-good pick-me-up, you’re more likely to catch me singing in my car to something like Michael Franti’s “Shake It” (“You’re perfect just the way you are”). But Whitney’s early impact set the tone. Though ultimately troubled, it was her class and strength of spirit at that early height of her career that brought joy and hope into one little girl’s heart.

— By Alisa Blackwood

It’s never easy when birth takes an unexpected turn — especially when you end up with a learning curve like caring for your baby in the NICU. But it’s always incredible to see how parents like Rachel and Dain find strength and optimism in the unexpected. You were parents before you expected to be, but my, how quickly you’ve fully bloomed into the role of loving, attentive parents.

What’s more, Rachel bravely shares her story of following her instincts when she wasn’t being listened to. Way to go, mama. That’s not always easy to do, but it is important.

Congratulations on sweet Olive’s arrival! We at Blooma will be sending you, Dain and Olive all our love and lots of energy to grow big and strong!

Love,

Alisa, Sarah & the women of Blooma

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"Olive about to hit the slopes."

Hi Sarah:

I just wanted to thank you and all of the ladies at Blooma.  I really enjoyed prenatal yoga and relaxing massages from Meredyth while I was pregnant.

I thought I would be writing this in May as I was due April 23, but our little lady had other plans. And one of the things I keep telling myself as I continue to wrap my head around our sweet baby girl’s early arrival and how much our lives changed in a moment is something I heard from you during class: this baby chose me.  Here’s my birth story:

There’s a lot to the back story, but to sum it up, my doctor missed the signs of preeclampsia in me as did the doctor who I saw at labor and delivery a week before I was admitted to the hospital.

In four weeks I gained 25 pounds, and my blood pressure was abnormally high. But the doctor did not comment on those things at my regular appointment.

About a week later, I woke up one morning with shocking swelling of my hands and face.

After a brief trip to labor and delivery at the hospital, I was told that it was probably due to a salty dinner the night before. I found it implausible, but never having been pregnant before, I believed the medical professionals around me.

Olive wearing her dad's wedding band. Love!

However, my swelling continued to worsen. I called the nurse line, and I was continually told it was a normal symptom of pregnancy. After three calls to the doctor’s office over three days I was beginning to feel like a crazy person, but they finally took me seriously after I had driven to the grocery store to take my blood pressure, and it was 179/99.

After my doctor was informed of that, she finally had me come in immediately on Thursday, January 26.  After 10 minutes at the clinic, she had my husband come to get me to take me to labor and delivery at the hospital.

We were only there for a few hours before the perinatologist on call made the decision to move me to a hospital with a level 3 NICU in case I had to be delivered since I was only 27 weeks, 3 days.

I was taken in an ambulance to Abbott. Luckily, I was able to receive two steroid shots 24 hours apart to help our baby’s lungs grow. At one point it even looked like I may be moved to a long-term floor to be on bed rest and hopefully keep the baby inside for a few more weeks. But on Monday, January 30, things quickly spiraled out of control when my blood pressure wouldn’t stabilize, and the baby was in distress on the monitor.

I went in for an emergency c-section, and our baby was delivered at exactly 28 weeks at 10:32 p.m. on Monday January 30.  The only comment when she was pulled out was “baby’s out, baby’s small.”

They didn’t even tell us whether it was a boy or girl before whisking her away to the adjacent room to work on her.  After about 25 minutes, my husband was able to see her, and he brought me back the camera to look at the pictures of her and tell me that she is a girl.

He then traveled with her to Children’s Hospital to the NICU. I didn’t get to meet her until about 3 hours later when they wheeled me over there. Only then did I learn that she was 1 pound, 9 ounces, which was very small even for her gestational age.

Her birthday was by far the most terrifying day of my life, but it was also the most incredible. And I couldn’t have done it without my awesome husband Dain by my side.

I was released from the hospital that Friday and am busy adjusting to living in the NICU with our little peanut (who is likely to be here until her original due date in April at the earliest.)

Lucky for us, our little micro preemie is a fighter.  She is fiesty with all of the nurses, and although she is dealing with many problems common to babies her size, we are confident that she will grow to be big and strong.

My experience couldn’t have been further from what I envisioned for my pregnancy and my birth, and I learned the hard way that there is no point in having pre-conceived notions of how your baby will come into this world.

I also learned that us mamas need to advocate for ourselves and for our babies because the doctors aren’t always right. Our bodies often tell us when something is wrong, and we should always listen to our instincts.

I don’t know what could have happened if I hadn’t fought to go in to the doctor (which I never should have had to do).

I’ve attached a few photos of our little Olive.  Thanks again for the great experience at Blooma.  I hope to be back for BYOB yoga someday.

Sincerely,

Rachel, Dain & Olive