Printable Birth Preparation Checklist
Get a simple, ready-to-use guide for those prenatal meetings, your natural birth classes, or talking to a partner about pregnancy needs.
Baby in the best place focuses on fetal positioning, connection with the baby, and letting labor start on its own.
Body in the best place is about choosing the most suitable birth place for your safety and the kind of birth you hope to have. Physical preparation is also important. Good nutrition, exercises, and posture, whole body relaxation, and staying home until active labor are all elements of solid natural birth class, preparation, and doula prenatals.
Mind in the best place covers birthing classes and prenatal education, positive thinking, trust in your body, and mental relaxation practices.
Rarely do events as powerful as birth go exactly as we plan, but these elements make a solid prenatal curriculum for stacking the deck in your favor. Share with your doula clients, or use it as a basis for your childbirth ed.
Childbirth Education Curriculum
If you’re writing your own birth class curriculum, you can use this as a guide or goals for your clients. When I teach, I hand this out at the end of the first class and briefly go over how these are my goals for them. I’m teaching this class not because you can’t have a baby without an education, but because, in the modern maternity climate, your chances of having the experience you’d like are greater with a little knowledge and know-how.
How can I stand up for myself with a doctor or midwife?
How can I trust myself, my baby, my body?
What can I do to optimize my hormones for birth?
Does this birth place regularly do the kind of birth I am hoping for?
What medical tools might I need and why?
What does it mean to relax and how will that help me or my baby?
Why does breathing matter in birth?
All these and many more questions are answered as you teach and learn about birth in a good birthing class, but it’s nice to have a framework for childbirth education.
And some people love a checklist!
