The Blooma Prenatal Yoga DVD is a really nice package of
prenatal yoga and extras. The actual yoga portion is about sixty minutes long. It includes an instructor and five pregnant women. The women are representative of the second and third trimesters. They all have visible bellies.
The DVD is well polished and the sound quality and videography is great. This makes it very easy to watch the video. This is often not the case in prenatal fitness and exercise videos.
Prenatal Yoga Instruction and Accommodations
The session is done at a nice pace. The instructor gives instruction and reminds you to make alterations as needed. That said, I did not see anyone choosing any major accommodations. The women participating in the yoga session also seemed to be very good at yoga. There are not any newbies participating in this video. I say this so that, if you are new to yoga, you don't assume that you can do the yoga in the same manner as the other participants. Though if you have some yoga experience, this DVD may be just up your alley.
DVD Extras: Birth Stories
This DVD is unique in that it comes with five birth stories with it. The five videos are really fairly quick snippets to encompass the entire labor. Some are as short as about two minutes and the longest is just about seven minutes long.
These birth videos incorporate both medicated and unmedicated birth, water births, home birth and hospital birth. The video footage is home video, but realistic. It doesn't have the polished look of Baby Story, but that's why I like it - it looks real, because it is real.
One of my favorite parts was that one of the moms is walking back to the bed, moments before her baby is born. She has to waddle because the baby is so far down. As a doula, I've see this walk, many, many times. In general, this exemplifies the sense of realistic birth you see here, in terms of how mothers move and behave in labor.
DVD Extras: PDFs & Breathing
There are two PDFs that are located on the DVD. These two PDFs are designed to help make women feel at ease with labor and birth, both in making labor easier and in looking at doulas for the births. These can be used over and over.
Another thing that is offered is a breathing awareness portion. It's simply two women, one mother and the instructor sitting down and doing a breathing awareness exercise. This is where my only real complaint is, the instrument she plays is annoyingly loud compared to the vocalizations. I found it to be distracting. This is a personal opinion because a mother I showed it to had a completely different take on it. She thought it enabled her to take her own lead and let the other voices fade into the background.
The Bottom Line
The Blooma Prenatal Yoga DVD is a great package for the price. You get, not only a lengthy, but well constructed yoga video for your own exercise or fitness, but many extras as well. In addition to buying this for an individual, this would make a great addition to a childbirth class or in the lending library.
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