WISE WOMAN WAY OF BIRTH DOULA TRAININGS

Posted on by

The Birth Doula Courses will begin again when Gloria’s court difficulties are settled. Thanks for your interest.

taught by Gloria Lemay

Jessica Austin, with a Doula client.

Jessica Austin, with a Doula client.

This course will give you the skills to assist women giving birth at home or in hospital. Doula services are in demand. There is a pre-reading requirement. Please email birth@uniserve.com if you have questions.

The course will be on Zoom and assignments and tests will be on Google Classroom.
12 Classes 2 and a half hours long.
Successful students will receive Wise Woman Way of Birth Doula Training certification.
OVERVIEW OF COURSE CONTENT
Class 1: Introductions, birth “politics” and Language
Class 2: Preventing Problems before the Birth: Nutrition. Prenatal Screening
Class 3: Types of “support” in birth: Midwife, Dr, Obstetrician, Doula — what are the differences? Comparison of home and hospital choices. Assisting your client in making a clear Birth Plan for the chosen place of birth.
Class 4: Anatomy and fetal positions, introduce the concept of “pain” and normalizing birth sensations through knowing the anatomy. Introduction to the concept of breech and twins as variations of Fetal positions.
Class 5: Medical Birth Phases and the “real” phases of birth and how to recognize them.
Class 6: Breastfeeding and early days postpartum and newborn care / Doula Role in these.
Class 7: Common Interventions and the Intervention Cascade. (Fetal monitoring, ultrasound, epidurals, Caesarean, vacuum, forceps, etc.)
Class 8: Preventing Birth Derailment in common scenarios and special situations: Induction for Postdates, augmenting a “slow” birth, a diagnosis of Low or High Amniotic Fluid Levels, Meconium, premature release of the membranes, vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC).
Class 9: “Informed Choice”: what it *really* means and how to use it as a tool for your client vs a tool for enabling the institutional model of birth, more work on creating a Birth Plan with a client
Class 10: Business Basics: Finances, record keeping, professional practices, client confidentiality, and effective advertising. Structuring a plan for working with clients from interview through to completion.
Class 11: Comfort Measures, supporting Long Births, Helpful things to say, Water Birth.
Class 12: Staying calm when the baby comes: Miscarriage, Abortion, and Stillbirth. How to support people through the hard things in birth work.

Added on May 22, 2024 From Gloria, I am training a great group of women to be birth doulas currently. It’s quite amazing to see them creating alliances and support structures from taking an online course. One of them voiced in the classroom that she thought the class would be about rubbing backs and saying comforting words to birthing women. Instead of that, we have to prepare the students for the “system” and how to navigate it to protect their clients from harm. This is my response to her: Quote: “Gloria Lemay May 19”
Oh, I wish so much that we could teach a nice course on how you should all be team players, think positive, reframe every terrible experience into a good memory for your client, be liked, be appreciated and live happily within a specific “scope” of practice. There are courses that try to “sell” that model of being a doula. We’re different. We name “Obstetric Violence” , “Medical Rape” and “Birth Trauma”. The numbers don’t lie. When 40% of our sisters, cousins, aunts, friends and associates are having their bellies cut open with a knife and their babies being dragged out drugged and dazed, we just can’t “sell” a denial of the facts. Medical birth is assaulting women.
All of your comments above are so important. Thank you for taking the time to read/watch the materials. I know they are disturbing. We need every one of you in the birth advocate business. It is scary and intimidating at times. That’s okay. You’re going to learn and experience things that will help you be better consumers of medical care to protect yourself and your family. You’re going to have moments of such pride and accomplishment when you know you’ve made a difference. You’re going to have times when you want to quit and get a nice job at a supermarket—-don’t do it! The secret agenda I have for each and every one of you is that eventually you’ll all be the woman in your community who is the “Go To, Birth Woman”. People do recognize courage and persistence.”
Contact Gloria Lemay at birth@uniserve.com

15 thoughts on “WISE WOMAN WAY OF BIRTH DOULA TRAININGS”

    • That’s what we thought, too, Michelle. Surprisingly, we’ve managed to give the students lots of assignments that duplicate the
      hands on part of the course. Something we never did when we were doing “live” classes is to require students to find a pregnant
      woman in their community to practice interviewing on different subjects. This has led to many of the pregnant women asking the
      student doula to attend their birth. This is another thing we didn’t plan but we’re very happy about it.

      Reply ↓

  4. Last call for the final course of 2022. The course will be 12 Saturday mornings for 2 1/2 hours on Zoom (10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Pacific). Course begins on Oct 1, 2022 and concludes Dec. 17, 2022. Cost $675. Taught by Gloria Lemay. Homework and assignments on Google Classroom. This is not your usual doula training. The course will teach you how to advocate with confidence and build a business with integrity.

    Reply ↓

    • Julia, I’ve posted the dates/times of the course in the blogpost above.
      We update the material on a regular basis. Payment for the course depends on where you live. People in Canada tend to send money by Interac transfer. From the United States, the easiest thing tends to be a Paypal transfer. Thanks for asking.

      Reply ↓

  7. No birth doula classes in 2025
    We now offer Postpartum Doula Courses taught by Candice Johnson. (see the Postpartum Doula Blogpost for the dates). Thanks for asking.

    Reply ↓

  8. Hi Gloria, we are living in Adelaide now. Yesterday i attended a homebirth picnic gathering snd met sooo many that were singing your praises. They are all a little scared because someone in their circle is being thrown in the fire. I remember when this happened to you and hos we all came together to fund raise. Neil and I held an art auction in our home and so many others did whatever they could to support. You had s statement that you made to the media. That you kept repeating until finally it was what the media stated. Please remind me of the words? XxooMarina

    Reply ↓

    • Hi Marina, It seems like their are court cases all over the globe these days involving birth workers. When I went through that big court case many years ago, I was charged with my business partner, Mary Sullivan. We felt so
      threatened by the attack and we realized we would need help from people in the birth field and, to this day, I am so moved by the outpouring of support to help pay our legal fees. It was before we had the internet and most
      of the money came in envelopes in the mail containing $5 bills. It all added up. Mary and I did some soul searching to come to a context for what we were facing / / / something to be our motto. What we came up with was
      “THIS IS THE LAST TIME WE WILL SEE MIDWIVES IN THE CRIMINAL COURTS IN CANADA. That’s all we ever said to the press as the case went on and on. No one seemed to notice that we only had that statement to say. On the day that we were finally acquitted by the Supreme Court of Canada, I was listening to the CBC while driving in my car. The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) was interviewing a Professor of Law who was commenting on all of the cases that had been announced that day. When they got to our case, the host asked the law professor what he thought about the midwives case in British Columbia. To my surprise he said “Well, I think it’s a common feeling in law circles that this will be the last criminal trial of midwives in Canada”. I almost drove my car off the road when I heard that. Please share that with the midwife who is dealing with Court in Australia now. Tell her to contact me at
      birth@uniserve.com if she would like to correspond with me. Thanks for writing. Love Gloria

      Reply ↓

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *