It depends and take the following into account:

-Your body has the hormone relaxin releasing during pregnancy and potentially several months afterwards. This means you are more susceptible to injury as your muscles are more easily over stretched. 

-Most teachers are not fully trained in working with prenatal students. I recommend working with teachers who have the training. 

-I would not recommend any heated classes as they can affect blood pressure as well as over stretching even further.

-I recommend not doing deep big backbends or more advanced stretching (such as one legged pigeon without support) as well as intense breathing exercises like kapatabali. However if deep backbends are in your regular practice and you have someone with you to navigate variations, it might be something you keep.

-If you are a beginner yogi, it's really best to stick with Prenatal yoga. With more advanced practitioners find the balance between feeling good and being safe. You may find some poses are really not feeling good anymore or might feel dangerous, or you don’t feel good the next day etc. 

-Meet yourself where you are at. This means trying not to have expectations of what you “should” or “shouldn't” be doing and know that your body is continuously changing and needs you to be mindful. Remember that you more than likely can practice those poses once your body has healed from labor so give yourself the mental preparation. If you have to Flow; consider alignment based flow or something that's slower so you can pay attention to what doesn’t work anymore. My general thought is if you can be in a class and not worry about spending a lot of time in child's pose, doing maybe half the vinyasas and have a comfortable alternative to sivasana then you can try staying in vinyasa but maybe take a prenatal class once a week.

-Third trimester - lying on your back probably won't feel good anymore. Planks can be very dangerous as they put intense pressure on the Linnea Alba and can further exacerbate diastasis recti. If you cannot engage your abdominals or you see or feel a pooch - definitely don't do plank!

In general - 

Wait at least 6 weeks for vaginal birth and 8 weeks Cesarean birth.

You should be bleeding or spotting at all-this is indicative of your uterus shrinking an healing so you are most susceptible.

You need to be cleared by your midwife or doctor.

Also note -

 The “fourth” trimester sets you up for the next 40 years of your life. This means, the more you slowly ease into physical practice or exercise (especially running or high impact) the better chance you have at healing faster

I personally do NOT recommend crunches for around a year after giving birth and definitely not if you have diastasis recti.

Ah, the Kegel debate.

Here’s the dealio, Dr. Kegel was a man (already feel sceptical about a man telling me what I need to do with my body) who invented a machine that could tell what muscles in the pelvis were weak or unresponsive. He would then teach patients how to engage the necessary muscles.

Flash forward to now, most people do not use machines to tell us what to strengthen and so we just squeeze whatever hoping for the best. This can actually cause more harm than good. Do you want to have a strong pelvic floor? Absolutely!

But you first need to understand your own to know what you actually need to do. For more info, check out the articles/books below and feel free to reach out as pelvic floor yoga is a speciality of mine. I often offer workshops as well. Check it out here:

Why Kegels may sometimes do more harm than good

Pelvic Liberation

Rachel Yellin

Schedule a complimentary phone session to see how I might best serve you!

Prepare for the 4th Trimester (article coming soon!)