Passion for Birth Childbirth education training

How is Passion for Birth unique?

Teri Shilling, the CEO (Creative Energy Organizer), is on a personal mission to stomp out boring and ineffective childbirth classes. Too often when she asks parents if they took childbirth classes, they will respond, "yes, but they didn’t work" or "yes, but they were boring." By completing the PfB program, you can be confident that the word "boring" will never cross the lips of your class participants!! All of the trainers who lead the seminars are committed to facilitating interactive, dynamic, evidence-based programs. We model what we preach. All of us are doulas, (attending births as our travel schedule allows) and we are still active childbirth educators in our communities.
PfB hopes everyone will take the Lamaze International certification exam. Proudly we can say that we have had an extremely high pass rate for people who are writing it in English as their first language. For those who are taking the exam in other languages than English, it’s more challenging. (very do-able but challenging.) They are still dynamic, incredible educators!

Passion for Birth™ (PfB) knows to "stomp out boring childbirth classes" is a HUGE challenge but we are working to inspire, support and equip childbirth educators around the world to be dynamic and evidenced-based while including "fun" and interactivity in their classes!

What will I gain by coming to a PfB workshop?

you'll be more effective and interactive!
you'll build skills and learn techniques you can use immediately.
you'll learn and retain more in 3 days than you can imagine.
you'll increase your networking resources.
you'll get great resource materials.
and so much more.

Who comes to PfB workshops?

People who are just starting on their path to become childbirth educators as well as experienced educators who are looking for fresh ideas or others who are interested in pursuing Lamaze or ICEA certification. Most groups include nurses, doulas, new moms who were inspired (or traumatized) by their births, "natural" educators from other disciplines, social workers and people who just know that they want to become a childbirth educator!

What are people saying about their Pfb seminar?

From the written evaluation from a recent seminar:

"By completing this seminar, how has your teaching improved?"

I was inspired to get my class up and moving more
I got a lot of ideas for visual aids, I am more excited, more confident
Less talking and more hands-on. More confidence that I can do this
No more boring lectures
More ways for interaction
Having another way at look at things
I feel I now have a dose of contagious enthusiasm to pass on to my students. My classes will be much more interactive, fun and memorable
So many new ideas to get the point across
More creative, more interactive
Gave me a great base to develop my plan
Immensely! Total change in my scope of teaching and practice
I’ve learned new teaching ideas!!!!

The Vision

(adapted from the Lamaze International vision)

For women and their partners around the world to be inspired to seek normal birth*, igniting their confidence within, facing fears and celebrating strengths.

*normal birth is defined as waiting for labor to start on its own, with its own rhythm and pace without routine medical interventions, choosing upright positions to facilitate birth, having continuous skilled support and immediate skin-to-skin contact between mom and baby.

The Mission

To stomp out boring childbirth classes by supporting and mentoring a passionate team of creative, inspirational, and interactive childbirth educators around the globe who will reach out in their communities to offer education to pregnant women and their support team. We envision all programs being open, accessible and dynamic.

We are diverse and passionate. We open our arms and hearts to non-traditional childbirth educators.

We weave the Lamaze International philosophy into our work. We hold the Lamaze certification as the gold standard.

We aspire to spread the passion for birth.

Guiding Principles

Knowing is an active verb. According to Mary Belenky and colleagues in Women's Way of Knowing, when a woman learns she moves from accepting knowledge, to questioning how it fits in her life, to shaping the knowledge so that it has meaning and use in her context.

We will design learning tasks to facilitate that process.

All programs will focus on ideas/concepts (wisdom - mind), feelings/attitudes (courage - hear) and skills (strength - body) and ultimately will tap into the inner wisdom/strength each of us has. We believe that learning is most effective when we are actively engaged - cognitively, emotionally and physically. We invite critical thinking, demand reflection and stimulate creativity.

Learning does not occur in a vacuum and cultural awareness will be a foundation, supporting what we do.