A good mindset to get into is to think of birth as an endurance event that you need to train for. You need to build up stamina and general fitness, and some core abdominal strength, and work on a bit of leg and arm strength depending on what positions you think you might use during the birth (and arm strength comes in handy for lifting and breastfeeding a newborn).

There's a hormone called Relaxin going through your system now. This is mainly to loosen your joints and ligaments so that you can give birth, but as a bonus it also makes you really mellow. I suddenly had so much more confidence when I was pregnant; it was wonderful. But it does mean you need to be careful when exercising as it is easy to overstretch now or put excess pressure on your joints.Another issue is that sometimes pregnant women can increase their shoe size because the Relaxin causes their feet to spread if they put on a lot of extra weight. You can limit this by wearing good shoes as much as possible, particularly when exercising.

The other problem you might find is heartburn at night because the oesophageal valve is also relaxing. I don't recommend bending over straight after eating either.

I did yoga twice a week until about 25 weeks and then I dropped the abdominal focus class and continued with the weekly pregnancy-focused yoga class until the week before I went into labour. But doing that intense core strengthening class really helped to prevent any back pain developing as my abs supported my belly and my back. However, it meant that my tight ab muscles had to separate during labour (not painful though - it's just connective tissue that stretches out) to prevent tearing the muscles. This meant I had to be careful of overusing my stomach muscles for a few weeks after the birth. So there's a balance between having a strong core for support and pushing and muscles that are loose enough to give. I would do less ab work next time round.

On the weekdays that I wasn't doing yoga I tried to get out for a walk. I found a half-hour route that had some hills and flats which was ideal. In my second trimester when I didn't get much exercise during the school holidays when the yoga studio closed I ended up with a pinching sensation around one hip. After two sessions of walking it out it was gone. Two or three weeks before my baby was born I was still up for a couple hours' hike up a nice big hill. (Which was overdoing it considering the heat…)

Later on in summer when it was just way too hot to walk I jumped in our neighbour's pool and did some aqua-aerobics that I made up. Really more to make myself puff a bit to keep my stamina up. I found actual swimming tricky - the cartilage in my pelvis felt tender after doing breaststroke kicks, so I don't recommend doing that. Backstroke was top heavy and in the wrong position, and freestyle felt like I was going to sink too much.

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