Compare Trainings

There are several other childbirth educator trainings nationwide. Our lead instructor, Janelle Durham, has taken several of these trainings, including workshops by Passion for Birth (affiliated with Lamaze International), ICEA, CAPPA, Birthing from Within, ALACE, and Seattle Midwifery School, and she brings the best of all those trainings to our workshop. There is also Birthworks, BEST, Bradley, Hypnobirthing, online learning through childbirthinternational.com, and maybe more.

The majority of these organizations do not teach in the Pacific Northwest. Your prime options in the Northwest are Great Starts, Seattle Midwifery School (the Parent Trust Great Starts program team writes their curriculum), and Bates Technical College.

In choosing a workshop, we would strongly recommend that you pick one that is 24 hours or more of training for knowledgeable professionals, and 30 or more hours of training for someone new to the field. Although some of the shorter programs have excellent things to say, we do not believe that they offer enough class time to adequately learn the material. Longer class time allows for more class content, more bonding between students, more real-life examples from the instructors, and, most importantly, more opportunities to practice teaching.

We recommend that you pick a workshop that requires you to do three or more mini-teaching sessions / presentations during the workshop. We believe that this practice teaching is one of the single best ways to prepare to be an educator.

We would also recommend that you choose one which covers:

1. Informed choice: a fair, unbiased presentation of all the options, which allows students to choose for themselves the maternity care options that best help them meet the goals for their birth.
2. Research-based, current information about maternity care practices.
3. A wide variety of comfort techniques for managing labor pain so that the birthing woman has lots of tools that she can adapt to her needs during labor.
4. Interactive teaching techniques using AV’s, dialog, games, discussion, and more; never just lecture!

In addition to the Great Starts workshop, we also write the curriculum for the Childbirth Educator Training at Seattle Midwifery School. We will compare the trainings here, to help you figure out which one is right for you.

Childbirth Educator Training at SMS	Basic Teacher Education Workshop
6 days. 48 hours of class content	3 or 4 days, 24 hours of class content
Appropriate for anyone wanting to learn to be a childbirth educator, whatever their background. (i.e. both newcomers and “experts” welcome.)	Appropriate for trained professionals, such as midwives, nurses, experienced doulas, and physical therapists.
Content emphasizes both 1) learning the information a childbirth educator needs to know (this may be a review for some students, it may be fresh learning for others) and 2) learning how to convey that information to students.	Content assumes that you already have a solid working knowledge of the information a childbirth educator needs to know about pregnancy, labor and birth. Class time focuses on how to teach that information to students.
Practice teaching: 5 “teachbacks”. For each, students prepare and present a 10 minute lesson to a small peer group and an experienced childbirth educator. Students are encouraged to use a variety of teaching techniques, and cover a variety of topics.	Practice teaching: 3 "teachbacks" Prepare one ten-minute lecture with AV's on a challenging topic. Prepare two ten-minute demonstration and practice sessions on exercise, breathing, and relaxation techniques.
Readings: Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Newborn by Simkin, Whalley, and Keppler. Maternity and Women’s Health Care (nursing textbook) by Lowdermilk and Perry. Childbirth Education: Practice, Research, and Theory by Nichols and Humenick.	Readings: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Newborn. (Covers all the information you might cover in a class, in language appropriate to students.) We assume you have read additional texts in the past with technical details about birth. Recommended: Childbirth Education: Practice, Research, and Theory.
Covers breastfeeding and newborn care.	Does not cover breastfeeding. Touches on newborn care.
Format: two three-day weekends (Friday, Saturday, Sunday). Usually the weekends are about a month apart.8 am – 5 pm each day	Format: Seattle workshops: a Thursday and Friday, then following Monday, and Tuesday. 9:00 - 4:30 each day. Other locations, schedule may differ.
Location: Seattle Midwifery School in U Village / Laurelhurst area of Seattle	Location: Parent Trust's Center For Strong Families.  2200 Rainier Avenue S. in Seattle
Size: 8 – 24 students	Size: 6 – 12 students
Continuing education credit for ICEA (which also counts toward DONA)	Continuing education credit for ICEA and Public Health Seattle-King County/WSNA
Cost: $859	Cost: $500. Discount for public health nurses from Seattle-King County
Instructors: Lead instructors are experienced childbirth educators. Several guest speakers, including nurses, massage therapists, midwives, lactation consultant.	Instructors: experienced childbirth educators, whose professional backgrounds include social work, nursing, and physical therapy