No one regrets taking prenatal classes! (Though many who didn’t, wish they had).You will encounter many decisions as you progress through your pregnancy and then through labour, birth and parenting. Get yourself and partner off to as good a start as possible by facing your fears, doubts, and questions and embracing the unknown with courage, compassion and curiosity. Find resources, support and information. As rooted parents, you will be able to weather the stresses of transition and flourish as a new family.
People who take prenatal classes have:
- increased confidence for labor and birth
- higher likelihood of breastfeeding
- improved communication between childbearing women and their maternity care providers
- decreased need for analgesic medication in labor
- increased satisfaction with birth (Chalmers & Kingston, 2009; Enkin et al., 2000).
About the Classes:
I am engaging clients in creative childbirth (prenatal) education classes, offering postpartum doula services and seeking to awake women to the power of their bodies and minds as well as support and nurture families in the transition to parenting. My classes are evidence-based and intuitive-nurturing, incorporating the six Lamaze care practices with philosophies from Birthing from Within or video of the same: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2ujaicsGz8
Topics Covered (depends on the length of classes):
- Birth work – heart & mind: “What is your “question”? ” (incorporates art making) Lamaze Six Birth Practices & Birthing From Within Principles
- BRAIN – empowered decision making (what you need to ask! is as important as what you need to know)
- Birth place, care providers, partners, labour helpers and doulas
- Changes of Early Pregnancy and Nutrition, Tests
- Stages of Labour and Complementary Hormones
- Coping Strategies for Labour (positions, breathing, visualization etc.)
- Gentle caesarean birth
- Choices around newborn care and common interventions
- After Baby is Born: attachment, breastfeeding essentials, diapering, carriers, sleeping, and self-care
- Birthing Parents: mourning and celebrating rites of passage, transitions in relationship, power dynamics