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Labor Coach VS. Transformational Birth Support Coach: What’s the Difference?

In 2006, after a decade of practicing as a labor doula and while training as a transformational life coach, I realized that transformative prenatal coaching must be the foundation of successful labor doula support. I understood that the coaching principles and strategies can be a game-changer when integrated into birth support practice. This understanding, which I almost missed due to lack of training, became the cornerstone of my career. Since then, I’ve developed an innovative framework for prenatal and postpartum coaching that has helped many students and me achieve impact, satisfaction, and increased income. Dedicated to doulas’ success, I want to shout and invite all doulas and childbirth educators to join me and learn how to practice transformational prenatal and postpartum coaching. However, since doulas and childbirth educators are traditionally called “Labor coaches,” I am continuously called to clarify the following: What’s the difference between a labor coach and a transformational birth support coach?

The emergence of Labor Coaches in the 70s

Since the 1970s, non-medical trained professionals supporting individuals undergoing their childbearing process have been called Labor Coaches. They saw themselves as members of the Natural Birth Movement, and the highest purpose of this group of professionals has been to decrease medical interventions in childbirth and promote Natural Birth or Physiological Birth. They’ve educated expectant persons so they could cope better with labor. They have provided physical support to birthing individuals during childbirth to support better coping and promote labor progress. They also advocated for expectant and new parents. This group includes childbirth educators, who typically deliver knowledge in a group setting, and labor doulas, trained to provide continuous emotional, physical, and informational support throughout childbirth. The two primary strategies traditional labor coaches rely on are providing information and offering hands-on physical support.

The highest purpose of labor coaches has been to decrease medical interventions in childbirth and promote Natural Birth, or Physiological Birth.

The emergance of transformational and life coaches

At the same time, around the 1970s, a new group of professionals emerged – coaches of different types—executive coaches, career, relationships, life, transformational coaches, etc. The coaching industry has grown rapidly, generating a staggering $15 billion in the USA alone. Coaching, the art of empowering competent and healthy individuals to perform optimally in areas of life where they are challenged, stuck, seek to implement a change or achieve new goals, has become a powerful force. It helps individuals conquer their internal resistance, challenges, and fears, ensuring these barriers don’t hinder their success. The coaching process increases clients’ confidence, convictions, commitment to their process, and accountability for their goals and helps them take charge.

After five decades of labor coaching, the statistics show that the highest purpose of labor coaches has yet to be achieved

However, these two groups of professionals never crossed paths. It’s unfortunate that they have yet to collaborate since the potential of achieving labor coaches’ goals by integrating the principles and strategies of the coaching profession is huge! After five decades of labor coaching, the statistics show that the highest purpose of labor coaches has yet to be achieved. On the contrary, the statistics of medical interventions and cesarean rates are alarming. For example, California’s 2018 Listening to Mothers survey shows that 75% of birth givers are well-informed. However, only 5% of them manage to give birth with no major medical intervention. This means 95% of all birth givers have undergone a major medical intervention! This statistic is devastating for labor coaches who don’t get to experience satisfaction and success. I feel fortunate to train as a transformational life coach and discover the power of transformative coaching in birth support.

Transformational prenatal and postpartum Coaching

Labor coaching and transformational coaching crossed paths for the first time in my book, The Art of Coaching for Childbirth, which was the final paper I submitted when graduating from the transformational coaching program. Since then, I’ve trained many labor coaches, teaching them how to integrate game-changing, transformative coaching strategies and exercises I designed uniquely for birth support. I established Birth Coach Method, intending to create programs that will teach birth professionals of all types – doulas, childbirth educators, L&D nurses, and others how to integrate the coaching principles, strategies, and coaching relationships into their practice. This integration helps to resolve many significant dilemmas and challenges. It is the foundation of birth givers’ autonomy and empowerment. It is the pathway to birth givers’ genuine engagement, and the road to the partnership sought between birthing individuals, their families, and their birth support providers. This partnership is crucial for the well-being of everyone involved.

This innovative framework shifts the focus from informing to prenatal coaching and from hours of hands-on support during our clients’ challenging moments to a series of prenatal coaching conversations that have successfully increased our clients’ confidence and performance levels and helped them develop a sense of agency. The series follows a structure, and transformational birth support coaches learn strategies to lead the conversations and coaching exercises to resolve specific areas of common or personal changes that might surface during the process.

Shift the focus from informing to prenatal coaching and from hours of hands-on support to a series of prenatal coaching conversations

Five differences between labor coaching and transformational birth support coaches

  1. What you miss prenatally can’t be achieved during childbirth: We’ve shifted the focus of birth support practices to the prenatal period.  This has allowed us to clarify our client’s beliefs, thoughts, and desired experiences, increase their confidence and undo their limiting beliefs and success blockers, help them foster commitment and elicit their accountability, help them adopt strong convictions about their way and truth, and take charge of their experiences.
  2. Informing helps one deliver knowledge, but coaching helps them deliver a baby: While labor coaches inform their clients, transformational birth support coaches ask powerful result-oriented questions. When we ask questions, we train our clients to have a voice and to feel that what they know about themselves matters and should be included in the treatment plan.
  3. Client engagement is client empowerment: Coaches engage their clients in actions—steps toward achieving their desired experiences. It’s how we foster clients’ commitment and increase their accountability. From one prenatal session to the other, we assign our clients areas of practice and 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.

  4. Hands-on support disempowers everyone: While doulas provide long hours of physical support, transformational birth support coaches engage their clients in powerful, result-oriented, and juicy conversations, which significantly reduce this hardship of the doula practice. Our coaching aims to increase confidence and positive mindsets, and our clients enjoy discovering their inner strength and new levels of determination and courage during their experience.
  5. Overcoming one’s internal resistances rather than fighting external systems:We focus on overcoming internal resistances and fears instead of battling external systems. We aim to empower our clients by helping them cultivate a sense of agency and assert their desires through optimizing their mindsets, perspectives, and attitudes. Our goal is to assist them in conquering their fears and overcoming personal changes.

How to Become a Transformational Birth Support Coach?

Visit our coaches directory 

We have an amazing community! Before everything else, join our Facebook group, where you can learn so much more about this new framework for birth and postpartum support. Additionally, you can watch many videos on our YouTube channel. If you are a birth professional (doula, prenatal yoga teacher, childbirth educator, etc.) and wish to learn the coaching strategies and exercises that helped me and many of my community members to gain impact and income while making a difference in our clients’ lives, I invite you to enroll in our 3-months Transformational Birth Support Coaching Program. 

 

Appendix: Why did I become a Transformational Coach? 

As a birth doula, I was trained in a yearlong program to continousley provide support to birth givers, their partners and their families. I learned extensive theoretical knowledge about childbirth and the postpartum period. I was trained to apply comfort measures and labor support tools to laboring individuals, and I’ve gained my childbirth educator certification.

Even with this extensive training program, I was discouraged, frustrated, and burnt out after about a decade in the field. The rates of medical interventions and cesareans have increased, and I felt that I was over-committing myself, under-delivering, and underpaid.  Unfortunately, I was also witnessing a client undergoing medical abuse, which left me traumatized. I decided to quit birth support and give up my passion for supporting birth givers, and enrolled in a transformational coaching training program. During this yearlong program, I have learned so many transformative strategies and exercises that ignited my passion; I longed to implement these in my doula practice and resolve the dilemmas and difficulties that got me to quit my doula practice.

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.

Neri Life-Choma

doula profession, prenatal, training

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