By Emma McGrath – Founder of Becoming Mama Yoga
Motherhood has a way of unravelling us and remaking us in the same breath. Before I ever held a baby of my own, I assumed it would all come naturally. Women had been doing this forever, right? Pregnancy, birth, raising a tiny human… it all looked so effortless on everyone else.
Then I fell pregnant for the first time in 2014 – and discovered very quickly that “effortless” was not going to be my story. I was thrilled, terrified, nauseous for 41 weeks and 3 days, and suddenly aware of just how many emotions can coexist in one body.
Joy and fear. Hope and grief. Comparison and pride. The full cocktail of matrescence – the profound, messy, beautiful process of becoming a mother.
Birth brought its own mix of magic and heartbreak. I experienced two caesareans and two VBACs, each with their own lessons, triumphs and tears. I learned that empowered birth can look many different ways, and that recovery – physical and emotional – deserves just as much care as the birth itself. Early motherhood was no less complex. I navigated postnatal anxiety and depression, breastfeeding challenges and the wild emotional swings that come with loving someone so fiercely while feeling so unsure of yourself.
And woven through it all was yoga – not as a fix, but as a lifeline – the single most powerful tool in my maternal toolkit.
Yoga helped me soften where I was gripping, breathe where I was bracing and reconnect with myself when my body and identity felt unfamiliar.
Yoga held me through pregnancies and recoveries, the chaos of raising little humans, and the heartbreak of four consecutive first-trimester miscarriages. Those losses reshaped me in ways I’m still discovering – softening, strengthening and deepening my understanding of what women carry as they move through motherhood.
Where Lived Experience Meets Professional Training
Somewhere in the middle of this big, beautiful, bewildering life, I trained as a yoga teacher. I didn’t just understand the need for support through every stage of matrescence; I had lived inside the gap where it should have been, but wasn’t always accessible. Not because people didn’t care, but because support can be hard to find, hard to afford or hard for others to offer in the ways we need most.
I kept thinking: I wish someone had held a space for me to feel seen, steadied and supported, and learn exactly what I most needed to know. It was a common theme in mothers groups too, echoed both online and in person. Eventually that thought became a calling: I’ve been there, I understand it from the inside and I can hold that space for others.
So I completed my 200-hour training around the pregnancy and birth of my third baby, upgraded to 350 hours during the pandemic with a baby, toddler and school-aged child at home and later added a 65-hour pre- and post-natal qualification.
My unique blend of lived experience and formal study changed the way I am and the way I teach. It made me more compassionate, more attuned and more determined to support women in ways I wish I had been supported.
I also bring a background as a veterinarian, which means I occasionally tell students to move their “front legs” – but it also means I understand anatomy, physiology and the instinctive patterns of birth and recovery in a way that beautifully complements yoga.
All of this – the births, the losses, the training, the healing – became the foundation for Becoming Mama Yoga, an online home for women in early matrescence: pre-conception, pregnancy and post-natal recovery.
Why Mothers Need More Than Information – They Need Support
So many women enter pregnancy and early motherhood feeling unprepared, overwhelmed or alone. I know this intimately. I lived it.
I didn’t know how to advocate for myself, or trust in my own intuition.
I didn’t know you could influence foetal positioning (before and during labour) to positively impact the birth.
I didn’t know how to recognise a good latch or protect my milk supply.
I didn’t know how to rebuild my core or pelvic floor safely after birth.
I didn’t know how to navigate the emotional storms that came with each new chapter.
And I didn’t know how much I didn’t know – until I was already in the thick of it.
That gap between what I thought I knew and what I desperately needed to know became the fire that fuels my work today.
I didn’t want other women to learn these lessons the hard way… I wanted them to understand their bodies, their choices, the many paths a positive birth can take.
