[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Childbirth preparation and childbirth education … these are SUCH loaded yet simple phrases! With the Internet, everything becomes confusing really. If you type into Google: childbirth information, childbirth education, childbirth preparation you get different websites and ads. You quickly find yourself falling down the rabbit hole of searches. You start putting in terms such as: preparing for birth, what should I know about birth, how do I prepare for my birth or where is ante-natal education in my local area … you find different websites. Weird isn’t it? So many phrases and are you sure you know whether childbirth education and childbirth preparation are actually the same things? Let’s keep going just for the laugh.

If you live in the US and Canada you’ll probably use phrases such as “birth information”, “birth education”, “childbirth preparation”. If, however, you live in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and other countries you’re more likely to use phrases such as “antenatal classes” or ‘prenatal education”. Whew … it’s exhausting!

And as crazy as the Internet is, you’ll get even different results from splitting the word childbirth into “childbirth education” or “childbirth methods”. La dee dah. What actually are you looking for? ‘Will childbirth education or childbirth preparation actually guarantee that I have a positive birth?’

Certainly many of us want to know how to create our Birth Plan. Making a Birth Plan is certain part of childbirth preparation and we use childbirth education to figure out how to create a simple, effective and useful Birth Plan. So we might type in ‘birth plan’ or ‘how to make a birth plan’ or ‘what should I focus on with my birth plan?’

We also want to know what to expect at birth. There’s even a book called ‘What to expect when you’re expecting’. That resource is full of childbirth information and some suggestions for childbirth preparation (finding it hard to understand the subtle difference?). Many websites pretty much say the same thing as What to Expect. Let’s look at Birth Plans from a unique viewpoint as part of childbirth preparation.

Birth Plans

Typically your Birth Plan is what you and millions of pregnant women are looking for when you search for childbirth or ante-natal preparation, childbirth or antenatal education or childbirth/antenatal information so you can create a good Birth Plan. After all, you want to create the birth you’d like.

There are approximately 7,500,000 webpages in Google for the search Birth Plan. You won’t lack the ability to create a conventional Birth Plan. You’ll get birth plan templates, suggestions on simple birth plans or printable birth plans.

As pregnant women we are sort of like chipmunks, gathering information, stuffing it in our cheeks, hoping to consume the information a wee bit later and have it all nourish us as we face The Birth of our baby. In fact, like pregnant women, we can be a bit frantic. We believe we have to know everything. We search for “birthing books”, “childbirth methods”, local “childbirth preparation classes” … and of course we find websites that reinforce our need to “prepare for birth’.

Eventually, your Birth Plan either begins to look like a wish list or a menu with items checked off: epidural … check ‘yes/no’; Vit K to baby … check ‘no/yes’: home/hospital … check “yes/no”! All of this search and energy does create your unique Birth Plan. You’ve used childbirth information, childbirth education and childbirth preparation to do one very important thing. You’ve imagined your birth and are letting your obstetrician or midwife what you want and don’t want in your birth.

So, the questions are:

  • ‘Will my Birth Plan either lead to the birth I want?
  • ‘What if my Birth isn’t anything like what I wrote in my Birth Plan?’
  • ‘Did all that childbirth information, childbirth education, and childbirth preparation help me manage the birth I HAD better?’ (AND THAT’S A QUESTION YOU’LL ASK YOURSELF AFTER THE BIRTH!)

Childbirth preparation, education and information should have a huge component that tells you ‘how-to’ birth and most don’t.

Anyone tell you about childbirth skills?

Wow, where did that phrase childbirth skills come from? That’s not a common part of either childbirth preparation, childbirth education or childbirth information unless you know about Lamaze, The Bradley Method, Active Birth, Hypno-birthing and Hypno-babies. Those are all skills-based resources but none of these will show up when you search for childbirth education, childbirth preparation or childbirth information … unless you want to become an instructor!.

Please make certain that you learn birth and birth coaching skills as part of your preparation for birth.

And of course, we want you to know about our resource Birthing Better Childbirth Preparation Online Course. (You might know Birthing Better as The Pink Kit or Pink Kit Method for Birthing Better). We hope that part of how you prepare for childbirth is to not only gather the information, make Choices and create a Birth Plan but find out about how these childbirth skills or birth skills methods differ from one another. Then pick one or more and really learn childbirth and birth coaching skills. Then write a Skills-based Birth Plan so your care provider knows what skills you and your partner/other will use during your baby’s birth.

Two Birth Plans:

  1. Conventional Birth Plan … what you want and don’t want.
  2. Skills-based Birth Plan … what skills your obstetrician or midwife will see you and your partner/other use throughout your baby’s birth.

No kidding! You HAVE to do your birth no matter where you birth, with whom or what is happening to or around you. And what many women realize during THE BIRTH is that all that childbirth preparation has to be something you USE rather than things you want, choose or hope for. That’s a huge distinction. You don’t want to find yourself saying “Everything I researched or learned in my preparation for childbirth went out of my head!” NO … don’t let that happen to you.

In other words, your childbirth preparation absolutely must give you and your partner/other the right skills that you can use in whatever type of birth you actually have. Birth unfolds during a finite period of Time. You have to fill that time with doing something so you can stay on top of, in control, manage, deal with, work through, handle and cope with whatever is happening! If your childbirth preparation has not given you good birth and birth-coaching skills then you are more likely to feel overwhelmed and out of control.[/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihkY6D-1ZOU”][vc_column_text]

Birthing Better is unique childbirth preparation

Here’s why:

  • Birthing Better was developed by hundreds of ordinary families for use in every type of birth! This means you are learning from people like yourself.
  • Birthing Better has been used by tens of thousands of families throughout the world in every type of medical system. This means the skills work in every single birth circumstance.
  • The other skills-based resources focus on achieving a natural birth … great if you have one. Birthing Better focuses on your being a skilled birthing mother and birth coaching dad/other no matter the type of birth you actually have no matter the one you wanted.
  • The other skills-based resources focus on a few skills: relaxation, breathing, yoga or self-hypnosis. Birthing Better has a huge range of skills because families needed many different skills for different situations ranging from Teamwork to 5 Phases of Contractions; from Deep Touch Relaxation to Mapping Your Pelvis; from Niggling Labors to how to use your skills at home, Birth Center, hospital and including a non-laboring Caesarean.

Do we think you should use Birthing Better as part of your childbirth preparation? Sure. Tens of thousands of Birthing Better families will have your back! Use childbirth education to lead you to the most effective childbirth preparation and use childbirth preparation to lead you to become a skilled birthing mother and birth-coaching father.

‘Childbirth methods like Bradley, LaMaze and Active Birth are all focusing on natural birth. The Pink Kit (aka Birthing Better) is incredibly different. These are skills for all births. Selling these resources has certainly changed the experiences of the couples who come to my classes’.

Marianne P, CBE..

I did heaps of research for our first birth. Drove my husband nuts. It mattered to me. If I could learn absolutely everything about childbirth then I just knew I’d have the birth of my dreams. Guess what? That didn’t happen. Nothing of our son’s birth was anything I could imagine. I felt totally lost, had no idea what to do and my husband was useless. I grieved for years! Birthing Better skills changed our lives. The skills were simple to learn, didn’t take heaps of Time but also we’re just focused on breathing and relaxation. Every gap I had could be filled with one or more birth or birth-coaching skills. My husband couldn’t believe I had spent so much time in our first pregnancy learning so much stuff that didn’t matter. Really what mattered was our ability to work together throughout our daughter’s birth. Her birth wasn’t anything like our son’s and nothing like I had hoped yet again.’

Brianny and Daniel Humerstrum

As a midwife, I really help my clients create a Birth Plan they will be happy with but I know how few Birth Plans unfold as people want. After 20 years of watching family after family feeling disappointed about their failed Birth Plans, I had to shift my focus. I learned about The Pink Kit (now known as Birthing Better) in 2000 and was sold. 85% of my clients are more than willing to self-learn from this fabulous course. My whole experience of birth has changed. Families are taking more responsibility during pregnancy but more important they actually behave differently during their baby’s birth. Instead of acting a bit stunned, waiting for me to direct them with the dad not exactly knowing what to do, now Birthing Better families start off using skills and just deepen their use throughout the birth. I’m less tired, more inspired and look back on those 20 years with quite a bit of sorrow.’

 Heather Stromen, CNN

Birthing Better skills were developed by moms and dads in the early 1970s in the US and used by many thousands globally in all types of birth. Birthing Better online birthing classes are housed in Common Knowledge Trust.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]