Childbirth Education
You just found out you're expecting! Congratulations! You are so excited to welcome the newest member to your family, but you can’t help but feel nervous too.
And I mean, why wouldn’t you? Your friends, sisters, and family members have all had mixed birth experiences. Epidurals, C-sections, midwives, unmedicated birth, you name it, they’ve had it. They tell you their stories but seem to sugar coat the hard parts… I mean at least their baby was healthy, right?
Wrong.
When you’re pregnant, it truly seems like everyone has an opinion, and it can be easy to lose your voice in the midst of trying to hear everyone else's. But when it’s quiet and you have your hand on your belly, you breathe in deep, and you just know.
You know there is intuition there. You know you have this beautiful gift of an innate knowledge of what’s going on in your body, and how connected you are to your baby. You know that you want your child's birth day to be gentle, and you feel like your body is up to the challenge of giving birth, even if your head is saying…”but can we?!”
We know that your whole life you have seen birth depicted as a scary event. Movies, books, shows… filled with women screaming, pushing on their backs, everything is dreadful and scary until the man in the white coat saves the day thing. Honestly, to hell with that narrative. Let’s be real about birth for a moment.
Don’t get us wrong, we aren't saying that birth is super stellar for everyone, or even that you have to love it. We're just saying, it’s time to face the music: our medical system treats pregnancy and birth like a health condition that needs to be managed, instead of the empowering and magical HUMAN experience that it is. Birth is just as much physical as it is mental and emotional. After all, pregnancy isn't a disease, and birth is not a major medical event..until it’s made to be that way.
In the US, we have a c-section rate of 32%, and that number continues to rise year over year. Studies have shown that when labor and delivery units are busy, your chance of c-section and other interventions increases drastically. Doesn’t really sound like that 32% is all life saving emergencies.
You see, hospitals are not designed to allow you to birth freely and powerfully. Hospitals are made to get you in, out, and on your way. They have processes and procedures that they want you to fit into, which means that if you don’t have a doula, then you need to go into your hospital birth armed and ready to advocate for yourself.
At Flourish Family Doulas, we want all of our clients to have a birth experience that feels within their control. We don’t want you to get sucked into hospital processes and procedures that don’t take birth into account.
We know doula care isn’t in the budget for everyone, but we want you to walk into your birth, whether you have a doula by your side or not, and say I know what I want. I know what's right for me. I got this, no matter what anyone else says.
That’s why, at Flourish Family Doulas, we offer sanity-saving childbirth education classes that prepare you and your partner to advocate for your birth. We want you be educated on what’s really going on, and we want you to have a really empowering, beautiful, and gentle birth experience. We believe in you. We believe in your partner, and your baby, and your body. We believe in your ability to BIRTH.
Our childbirth education classes are 4 weeks long and are taught by our amazing birth doula. At the end of your 4 week class, you will…
Learn strategies during pregnancy to positively impact your birth outcome
Understand what your body is doing at each stage of labor and how your partner can support you through it
Practice mental, physical, and emotional coping strategies
Acknowledge your contractions, learn ways to respond, and teach your body how to relax into the process
Know your rights in the birthing room and understand the potential interventions that might be introduced throughout your pregnancy and birth process
Recognize which interventions may be helpful for your birth and how to stay in your power even if you choose an induction method or receive an epidural
It's important for you to know that we aren't here to preach you. We know just how scary pregnancy and birth can be. We want you to equip yourself with the knowledge you need to have the empowering birth you deserve.
With an open dialogue and customizable class options, we work side by side to help you learn coping mechanisms, birth positions, relaxation techniques, and teach you all about how you can stay in control of your birth.
Sign up for childbirth education today!
