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Empowerment lies at the heart of birth professionals’ work and is one of the primary goals in supporting expectant and new parents. Empowering means instilling confidence, fostering autonomy, and equipping individuals with the tools to make decisions about their birthing and parenting experiences. Empowering expectant and new parents is about letting them feel seen, heard, and engaged—trusting they have the knowledge, strength, and autonomy to navigate the challenges of childbirth and early parenthood. However, sometimes empowerment misses the mark and bears pitfalls. Empowerment takes more than encouraging and informing; it’s about cultivating internal authority and ownership. That’s precisely what Transformational Birth Support Coaching helps individuals undergoing childbearing feel.
Matrescence (pronounced ma tres ens) is a term referring to a transformative period of identity-shifting experienced by a woman during her transition into motherhood. “The psychological birth of a mother, similar to adolescence, involves hormonal and identity shifting.
Transformation is a change from which there is no going back. When transforming, our everyday strategies and behavior patterns must be revisited and adjusted to to facilitate a smooth and empowering transformation. This simple observation is the origin of the Transformational Birth Support Coaching framework.
There’s no turning back from parenthood. It’s a transformation from being someone’s child to being someone’s parent, a change that shapes the rest of your life. It is becoming the designated adult accountable for someone else’s life. For first-time birth givers, this means transforming from someone who has been given life to someone who is giving life, which involves a physical transformation of the body, mind, and social status. This profound transformation is well described by the term “Matrescence.”
Birth Support professionals are committed to providing essential care and support to pregnant individuals and new parents, helping them navigate the challenges of bringing new life into the world. Pregnancy and postpartum are times of heightened emotions and vulnerability. Amid the current political unrest, the transparent fabric of hope and optimism that subconsciously led our clients to conceive has been interrupted. Staying hopeful and optimistic is less intuitive and demands intentional practice and awareness. At this time, birth support pros must help their clients to repair it. We must expand our skills to facilitate something beyond proper maternal care; we need to coach to evoke hopefulness and optimism. Transformational Birth Support Coaching Strategies are the path to this type of support.
Halloween always makes me think about the spooky creatures individuals are troubled by, such as labor pain, cesarean, irreversible body changes, and dying at birth. The fear of labor pain is a common challenge among expectant persons. After all, the process of childbirth has been for centuries described as one of the most intense, physically demanding, and painful experiences a woman can go through. This perspective overshadows the excitement and joy of bringing a new life into the world. In this blog post, we’ll explore the fear of labor pain as a spooky thought and discuss ways to conquer it, ensuring a more positive and empowered birthing experience.
Have you considered leading a prenatal or postpartum support process through questioning instead of providing information? Are you ready to consider making a difference in your clients’ lives by facilitating a transformation rather than delivering information? The post-pandemic era gave way to a profound transformation, reshaping every feature of our lives and society. Shouldn’t new practices for birth support be ushered in? Let me show you five key differences between informative and Transformative birth support.
If you want to begin the new year with a clear, positive, and achievable New Year Resolution, now is the time to start working on it. Whether you focus on personal, relational, or professional goals, crafting your clear and actionable New Year’s Resolution is a process that takes time. And when you master the art of clarifying your goals and visions, you can better serve your birth and postpartum clients by facilitating clarity about their desired experiences and helping them to commit to SMART goals.
Spiraling, rocking from side to side, shaking the extremities, curling the toes, changing positions constantly, chanting, moaning, and groaning, are just a few manifestations of birth givers’ state of consciousness. Do you know how to utilize mirror neurons to match birth givers’ body language, tonality, and representational system to deepen your connection, build trust and lead birth givers to optimally conduct themselves during their birth?
As a doula trainer and leader of doulas’ communities on social media, I am convinced that the three most significant challenges to having your thriving doula practice are client enrollment, client engagement, and client empowerment. And if you’re open to adopting a new framework for birth support, I know I can help you achieve these three Es with ease. You can learn new strategies for Enrollment, Engagement, and Empowerment in my upcoming Three Keys to YOUR Thriving Birth Support Practice 2-day workshop.
Doulas have heard this a hundred times: “I want a natural childbirth but I’m open to the possibility of getting an epidural”. Labor and Delivery nurses read it on birth plans thousand of times.
I leave myself open to… the possibility…
This opening can go both ways – it can lead your clients to triumph in moments of doubt and crisis or it can lead them to surrender to the fear and ask for an epidural.
This opening is where the coaching conversation begins. Coaches in many different fields, such as executive coaching, career coaching, relationships coaching, or lifestyle coaching are searching for this opening. And yet we, birth support professionals, are handed the opening so explicitly. This is our cue to begin to coach.
How do you engage the client in a powerful, life-changing, and results-oriented conversation, and not miss this amazing opportunity, this opening? How are you going to lead a coaching conversation with this expectant person or birthing individual who ‘leaves themselves open?’ Aren’t you curious to learn about the source of their hesitation – what is interfering with their ability to fully commit to their desired birth experience? Wouldn’t this be valuable to your support process if you understood what is the nature of the circumstances that will make them turn their back to plan A – having a natural childbirth, and choose plan B- asking for pain medication?
“You know, you weren’t there when the couple was making their baby. Give them some alone time”. This is what a midwife told me early on when I was a student enrolled in a hospital-based doula training program. This teaching moment could have probably been achieved in a more inspiring way, but I must admit that she made an important point and her words stayed with me throughout my 24 years of practicing as a doula. Over a decade after this lesson, when I enrolled in a yearlong program to become a transformational life coach, I learned another lesson relating to birth partners. I learned that If I coach even as little as two people, I am practicing group coaching and that the coaching conversations must address and resonate with birth partners’ souls.
