Pregnant Women Make Their Bumps Disappear And Fascinate The Internet

Belly Pump breathing technique makes pregnant women’s bumps look like they’re magically shrinking

When you see a link online that talks about making a baby bump disappear you might think you’re about to be hit with an ad for a waist trainer or some strange herbal pill that doesn’t actually do anything. But there really are videos of pregnant women making their baby bump shrink down to practically nothing, and they’re doing it solely through their breathing.

Don’t believe it? Watch:

Wild, right? We have so many questions — are we sure this isn’t Photoshop? How is she doing it? And when her bump flattens like that, where does the baby go?

Brooke Cates, a personal trainer, calls this baby disappearing act Belly Pumping. It’s part of The Bloom Method, an exercise program she’s created for expecting women. Cates tells Babble her method is designed to empower women both during the birth and as new moms. “I saw a need for it,” she says of her technique. Cates wanted to find a way for moms to feel powerful and strong during their pregnancies and proud of their postpartum bodes. She had encountered women who felt they sacrificed their bodies and fitness in order to become moms and wanted to change that. “Wow, what a negative way to see becoming a mother,” she says.

The Bloom Method helps women utilize their deep core through movement and breathing exercises. Cates has group classes for pregnant and postpartum moms in her Bolder, Colorado studio, as well as online training sessions.

Cates says the baby obviously isn’t disappearing. She claims when a pregnant woman breathes from her diaphragm and uses her transverse abdominal muscles to curl around the baby, it activates the pelvic floor and lifts the baby into the rib cage.

She believes this deep breathing technique helps calm babies in utero and gets them prepared for birth. She also claims all this pelvic lifting helps moms, too. She says first time moms who use her program average only 20-30 minutes of pushing during labor and don’t have lower back pain. She also says those pelvic lifts cut down on bladder leaks both during and after pregnancy.

Cates isn’t a mom yet herself, but she and her husband want to start trying soon. If everything goes according to plan she’ll use The Bloom Method herself during pregnancy. This way she’ll be able to wow her friends with her very own baby bump vanishing act.