picking up and getting up?

Hi Tillymamma

It sounds to me like your whole body is feeling weak. I am sure it will slowly strengthen if you give it some work to do.

I suspect that your leg muscles are kind of out of shape. This is a good place to start, because it is your leg muscles, particularly your hamstrings and quads, the big groups on the front and back of your thighs, that do the hard vertical work. When your muscles are weak they cannot stretch out effectively and they cannot contract effectively. Therefore they cannot move through their whole range of motion.

So get some stretching happening on the front and back of your thighs. Tight hamstrings will also hold the back of your pelvis down, which makes it hard to allow your pelvis its fully vertical orientation, and will make the back of your spine c-shaped. If you cannot get your sacrum to be horizontal you cannot make a good lumbar curve. So you cannot move your upper body back far enough to balance your upper torso, or you will tip over backwards. You need to get your belly forward so you can get your upper spine back.

Walk with long, slow strides that start just in front of your body, and end with your leg springing off at the last moment. This will extend the front of your thighs and your psoas muscles, and generally open your body out. When we walk in a c-shape we tend to take small, fast steps that are more out the front of the body. Each time the heel strikes the ground it will jar. With the foot flatter when it lands there is a smoother weight transfer to the toes on the way through. This is exacerbated by carrying a baby in front of you on your chest. It closes you up into nurturing posture and can cause tension on the back *and* the front of the body.

Plies are wonderful exercises for strengthening your thighs. Just do a couple of initially gentle plies and releves whenever you think of it. You might get 20 into a day that way.

Once your thighs are stronger and your hamstrings stretched out you will find WW posture easier, and your abdominal muscles will do more work, as they too will be more stretched out. This will automatically happen because it is the way your body was designed to operate. Your strength will be 'self-maintaining.'

Dancing is such wonderful exercise because it uses all your body's muscles, not just one or two.

1 Sounds a pretty good method. You can also give your hamstrings a bit of a stretch by allowing your body to hang from your hips and straighten your knees a little bit more before you rise to standing. Then bend them properly before rising to standing so you can use the whole zigzag effect of all your joints working together, which shares out the load on the joints and uses more muscles, with less effort from each. Having a big bend at the hips throws your abdomen forwards, well to the front of your pubic bones, and flattens your sacrum so gravity will pull your uterus and bladder closer to your navel, as long as you allow your belly to expand before you uncurl. This should reduce the pressure on the way up. It will also give your spine a gentle stretch while your torso is upside down with a very acute bend at the hips. Esther Gokhale has some lovely pictures on her site of people in Africa and Asia. Watch how they bend when planting rice. Straight legs, and bent deeply from the hips for hours on end, slowly walking forward in the paddies as they plant. Primitive posture in societies who do not have 'comfy chairs' is good modelling.

2 That sounds pretty good for now. Your baby must be getting pretty heavy. You could put her forwards on the floor briefly and stand up onto two flat feet in a semi-squat, as in 1, then pick her up from a semi-squat, with spine straight, hold her close and use your thighs to do most of the vertical lift. These thighs are very important weight lifters. That is why they are so massive.

3 Same as 1. Put her on the floor, get up to semi-squat, then pick her up from there, using your whole body, both sides the same. That's off the floor. You are probably talking about sitting in a lounge chair. They are all hard to get up from, because they slope backwards, and you end up sitting in a bowl, same as car seats. Don't sit in them if you can avoid it, but I think your solution is a realistic one. You might be able to wriggle yourself forwards onto the edge and get into a semi-squat while perched there. Your ever strengthening thigh muscles will increasingly make this easier. Another good way to strengthen your whole body is to not use chairs at all. Sit on the floor and work on the floor as much as possible, at baby height. Then you are using your leg muscles every time you get down or stand up. If exercise is built into your everyday life you will do it. If you have to find space and time for a workout, chances are that you won't. There are opportunities for thigh exercise everywhere you look, if you are looking for them! Use your baby for weightlifting.

4 Same as above.

5 See rice planters. Same principle. See the detritus as a tool for hammy stretches and getting up and down. If you live more of your life on the floor at baby level, your baby will love you, and you can pick up a few things and put them in an easier position to reach, each time you get up. Having a basket to put them in might help. You only have two hands! Kid detritus will try and drive you nuts for many years yet. Get used to it. ;-) (Dark laughter out loud) Just wait for the Lego to start. (More loud guffaws!!)

Louise

I didn't read what Louise wrote and I'll get back tomorrow to write more
but I use the broom! I push everything into one big pile by the table
then I sit down and reach up and put things on the table

it's so super fast for clean ups

Yeah. I found the garden rake is better, especially for little things like Lego (which shouldn't really be on the floor with babies anyway), because all the crumbs, and sticks and the rocks don't get in the pile of toys. ;-)

Another suggestion would be those big plastic 'hands' that are like giant shallow bowls, with straps for your hands, that are advertised for use in the garden. You can then put the hand/bowl on the table and sort it all out.

I clean up toys 2 times a day on all fours the bigger kids help me. I put everything in a big basket, and then let the kids put everything in place. Works for me.

For everything else I just pay attention to keep my lumbar curve and never let my chest to collapse. Feels enough for me. I never bend without keeping the lumbar curve in place. Standing up with baby: same thing.
Do this for a few months and it is going to become as natural as breathing.

Good luck! :)
Liv

Hi Tillymama

Yes, I would say it is hamstrings. This is where I think picking up while standing with legs straight and bending over deeply from the hips is useful.

It is interesting. My bellydance teacher who is very fit, and has a rubber body, cannot sit with legs straight out and touch her toes. She also seems to do some butt tucking. She is Italian extraction, and has big strong thighs, but little butt. I think it is the zipping and tucking that is the problem. I think it has induced tight hammies. She tells me that she has done a lot of competitive cycling in the past, and that cycling tightens the hammies. She is working on it, and it is getting better. Like POP, it is a gradual process remoulding the body.

I have tight hammies every morning. I am currently trying to do more ground level tasks like a rice planter to see if that will loosen them during the morning. I find that when my hamstrings are really tight I cannot get my legs right up in the air while lying on my back. After aI do some hammie stretches I can get them higher, though it might not be for an hour or so. It is like the body has to clear out the lactic acid, and can clear out the lactic acid from the tight muscle, once it has been stretched and has a larger range of movement. Or maybe there is a lot of blood (inflammation) in the muscle because it is using a lot of energy, trying to keep itself tight. It is a little while until that blood can dissipate and allow the extra movement.

Take it slowly, and be persistent but gentle. You might be right once you have made them longer, but you might need to persist. Mine seems to be a problem of long standing. I hope I will eventually lick it.

There are numerous hamstring stretches you can do. Whatever you do, don't tuck your butt while you do them, whether lying on the floor, or standing or sitting. Measure your progress with the stretches on your back, maybe with sticky dots on the doorjamb or something. I am trying to stick to exercises I complete everyday tasks and activities, cuz then I know I will do them. Now, I am off to plant some rice!

never thought about sweeping up toys.
usually I crawl around on hands/knees tossing toys in the general direction of where they live, and then put them away (sitting on floor or still hands/knees)