As a Lamaze Educator Program Director and Trainer, I constantly hear questions from people about what prerequisites they need to be take the seminar and begin their journey.

The simple answer is to take Birthing Babies VA’s seminar you don’t need any experience prior to attendance.  The seminar is designed to be a crash course into building your childbirth education program and starting your pathway to Lamaze certification.

There are many different roads that lead to starting a childbirth education business.  Perhaps you are a Labor and Delivery nurse and find that the women in your community are not receiving adequate education prior to arriving at the hospital in labor.  Maybe you have been teaching classes or working as a doula and are looking for opportunities to build your business.

If you are considering this journey, perhaps the best prerequisite is to know why you are doing this.  Here is a great exercise in understanding?

Do you have a passion for birth?

Do you seek knowledge?

Do you feel you would be a good advocate for parents and babies?

Do you believe in the importance of health literacy?

Do you currently work with expecting families?

There are many other driving factors to beginning your journey with Lamaze.  But, if the answer to any of these is yes this is probably an excellent journey for you.

For me, my journey into childbirth education began with the birth of my son.  When I was pregnant with Jack my experiences with birth were extremely limited.  I had attended the birth of my first nephew, I was there to take pictures of the birth and sit in the corner and read during the actual labor.  Needless to say, my book stayed unopened the entire time.  I walked the halls with my sister and cheered her on as she pushed (that was about the extent of my capabilities at the time).  When it was time for my own birth experience,  her experience was my only.

So I did what I do, I studied everything that there was about birth.  From the moment I found out to the moment he was born, I was on a quest for more information.  I signed up for every email, spent my free time searching pregnancy, took a childbirth class, and crowd sourced to get everyone’s perspective of childbirth I could find, from friends to doctors, if you knew anything, I was picking your brain.

The funny thing is though, my quest to gain information didn’t end with his birth.  I took my own experiences and started studying them.  Was this normal?  Was there another route?  What could have been done differently? (Caviat, my son had a great birth.)

Quickly, my birth obsession became my career when I put my program management experience to work and became the manager of a prenatal education program.  I kept studying.  I was committed that our moms would recieve the best, most up to date information in the easiest format for understanding.

Along my studies I found Lamaze.  My mother took Lamaze classes when she was pregnant with my sister and me, I took a different course. I had an amazing childbirth educator teach the course I was in, but I didn’t feel comfortable certifying with that agency when the time came.  For me, Lamaze was a match made in heaven, all the information I craved was within the Cochrane Database (perk of Lamaze Membership, which training attendees automatically become). I also really enjoyed that those studies were further broken down within articles from the Journal of Perinatal Education (Lamaze’s Academic Journal).  Plus, Lamaze is such an amazingly responsive and support organization, everything I needed to start and build my classes was made available to me.

It’s been 6 years since I initially received my Lamaze certification and each year I am even more grateful for the choice I made.  Undertaking a career that helps parents advocate for themselves and their families is one of the most fulfilling choices I have ever made.

It’s amazing to me the motivations that lead towards taking the leap to teaching childbirth classes.  I have seen doulas, nurses, midwives, nurse practioners, mothers, sisters, fathers, and health advocates join the classes I offer.  Each has a unique gift to offer expectant families and I am so happy to help them on their journeys.