When her son was a toddler, Deena Blumenfeld started teaching yoga, partly out of a need for adult contact. When she started branching out to prenatal yoga, a funny thing happened.

"What I found from the mothers because I started seeing them regularly was they started feeling comfortable asking me questions that they didn't feel comfortable asking their doctors," she said. "But they weren't things that werewithin the scope of the practice of yoga."

The mothers-to-be wanted Ms. Blumenfeld's guidance for a range of childbirth and baby-related things, such as Lamaze and breastfeeding.

"I came to realize that women needed more than prenatal yoga or a childbirth class. They needed continuity, a community with a consistent message of support," she said.

After conducting classes for a couple of years, she opened Shining Light Prenatal Education on Butler Street in Lawrencevillein 2012 as a place to help educate and guide women through pregnancy, childbirth and beyond.

Her motivation came from her personal experiences. Her son Owen was born via Caesarean section, which was not what she had planned.While she was still earning her yoga teacher certification, she discovered she was pregnant with her second child.

At that point, she enrolled in an intensive prenatal yoga teacher training, and has since become a certified Lamaze and prenatal yoga instructor. Classes at Shining Light now include pre- and post-natal yoga, family yoga, and baby sign language. There also is a support group for new mothers.

She said there are about 25 or 30 similar centers like hers around the country, and there are other places in Pittsburgh where pregnant women can get childbirth classes, Lamaze classes or even prenatal yoga. "But this is the only place where they can get all those things together," she said.

Even the type of yoga she teaches is a niche within its field. "It's very tailored to the pregnant body," she said, "no abdominal work and you're not going to sweat bullets. We're indirectly preparing the moms for labor, so we do a lot of positions that will be helpful, like squats. Even the breathing and relaxation skills can carry into labor with them."

She has even been called upon to teach other yoga instructors how to accommodate pregnant women into traditional classes, Ms. Blumenfeld said.

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