Labor Coach Or Transformational Perinatal Coach? Find The Difference
In 2006, after a decade as a labor doula and while training as a transformational life coach, I realized that transformative perinatal coaching must become the foundation of practical doula work. Coaching strategies, when integrated into birth support, were a game-changer. This insight became the cornerstone of my career. I developed a new framework that’s helped many doulas—myself included—find more impact, satisfaction, and income. Now I invite all birth professionals to learn the difference between being a traditional labor coach and a Transformational Perinatal Coach.
The 70s—The Origins of Labor Coaches
Since the 1970s, non-medical birth professionals have been called labor coaches. Their mission was to reduce medical interventions and promote physiological or “Natura” birth through education, advocacy, and hands-on support. But five decades later, this goal hasn’t been realized. For example, a 2018 California Listening to Mothers survey found that 75% of birth givers were well-informed, but only 5% gave birth without major medical intervention. Knowledge alone isn’t enough, nor is hands-on support.
The Rise of the Coaching Profession
Also, in the 1970s, a new group of professionals emerged—coaches. Life, career, executive, and transformational coaching emerged as a new profession focused on helping capable individuals overcome internal resistance and interference and achieve goals. With a $15B market today, coaching has proven incredibly powerful in fostering confidence, agency, and results, leading individuals and teams to achieve their goals or desired experiences.
After five decades of labor coaching, the statistics show that the highest purpose of labor coaches has yet to be achieved.
These two worlds—birth support and coaching—never intersected until I introduced them in my book The Art of Coaching for Childbirth. I’ve since trained many doulas and other birth workers through my Transformational Perinatal Coaching program, showing them how to integrate game-changing coaching principles, strategies, and field-specific techniques. Exercises into their birth support practice. Their focus shifts from informing to transforming their clients’ lives and maternity care. Coaching conversations are powerful and help clients be prepared and conduct themselves with agency during the childbearing transformation.
Transformational Perinatal Coaching
This innovative framework shifts the focus from informing to transforming and from hands-on support during clients’ challenging moments to a series of powerful coaching conversations that successfully increase our clients’ confidence and performance, helping them to develop a sense of agency.
Shift the focus from informing to prenatal coaching and from hours of hands-on support to a series of prenatal coaching conversations
Five Key Differences
- What you miss prenatally can’t be achieved during childbirth: Transformationa Perinata Coahes have been shifting the focus of labor support to the prenatal period. Prenatal coaching conversations allow us to clarify our clients’ beliefs, thoughts, and desired experiences, increase their confidence, and undo their limiting beliefs and success blockers. In addition, we help clients foster commitment, elicit their accountability, and take charge of their birth and postpartum experiences.
- Asking vs. Telling: Traditional labor coaches inform. Perinatal Coaches ask powerful questions that build a client’s voice and agency. When we ask questions, we train our clients to feel that what they know about themselves matters and should be included in the treatment plan. I love telling my students that informing helps individuals deliver knowledge, but coaching helps them deliver a baby 🙂
- Client engagement is client empowerment: Coaches engage their clients in action steps toward achieving their desired experiences. It’s how we help them close the gap between where they are right now and what they want to achieve, and foster commitment. From one coaching session to the other, we assign our clients call-to-actions to help them take charge. We check in with them during the next coaching session and in texts and emails between sessions.
- Avoiding burnout: Perinatal Coaching energizes clients and practitioners through purposeful conversations instead of exhausting hands-on support. Transformational Perinatal Coaches engage their clients in powerful, result-oriented, and juicy conversations that significantly reduce the hardship experienced by traditional labor coaches.
- Internal vs. External Battles: Perinatal Coaching helps clients overcome inner resistance rather than fight the system. We prioritize overcoming internal resistance and fears instead of battling the medical system. We aim to empower our clients by helping them cultivate a sense of agency and autonomy.
Let’s Reinvent Birth Support…Together
We’re building a powerful community. Join our Facebook group, check out our YouTube channel, or, if you’re ready to join the movement, enroll in the 3-month Transformational Perinatal Coaching Program to gain the skills to help birth professionals transform their practice and lives.
Why Get Certified as a Transformational Perinatal Coach?
Though trained as a doula and childbirth educator in a comprehensive yearlong program, after a decade in the field, I felt exhausted, underpaid, and traumatized by witnessing the increase in medical interventions and cesareans, as well as medical abuse. I nearly quit altogether—until I discovered transformational coaching. The tools I learned reignited my passion. I went on to study NLP and hypnotherapy, and now I train others to thrive with coaching-centered birth support.
I have continued my education in transformative therapies and learned NLP and hypnotherapy. Now I train others so that they, too, can achieve their professional goals and thrive in their birth support practices.
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