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Course Description
The Childbirth Educator Training is a 6-day course. The curriculum includes:
- Reproductive anatomy and physiology
- Elements of prenatal care
- Women's experience of pregnancy and labor
- Nutrition and exercise
- Massage, relaxation, and breathing techniques
- Normal birth physiology and hormones
- Stages of labor
- Comfort measures for labor
- Pain medications
- Birth-planning and informed choice
- Medical procedures
- Cesarean birth
- The postpartum period, breastfeeding, and newborn care
- Adult learning theory
- Teaching methods and skills
- Curriculum development
Students learn the basics of how to teach childbirth and newborn care to adults. The instructors model a variety of teaching techniques including lecture, use of audio-visual aids, role-playing, and small group activities. Students apply their learning through practice teaching sessions, which offer each student a chance to give a short presentation to peers and receive an experienced childbirth educator's feedback.
Since most expectant parents plan to give birth in a hospital, most opportunities for childbirth educators involve teaching about hospital birth. Therefore, the class focuses primarily on how to teach about hospital birth, although out-of-hospital birth is also addressed.
Prerequisites
This training is appropriate for a wide variety of students, from lay people who wish to become childbirth educators, to birth professionals who wish to enhance the educational aspect of their practice.
Participants are expected to complete reading assignments and the e-learning study guide, which will be available to you, in an e-learning format, at least one month before the course starts.
For students without prior experience in the field, it may be helpful to attend our DONA-approved Birth Doula Skills Workshop or observe a childbirth education series as preparation for the class. It is also helpful if you have attended at least one labor and birth, either as a birthing woman or as a support person.