Please note-this is a course which covers pregnancy, birth and postpartum trauma responses as well as chronic trauma. It is kind and supportive, but not a therapeutic environment, so if you have trauma round your perinatal year, please ensure you are well supported outside of the group.
Please also manage your expectations around being ready to learn about the role of supporter, not to continually debrief your own story. There will be an opportunity for your sharing of course and it will be very welcome, but this will not remain the focus.
Our Deep Dive Doula 13 week online programme offers a thorough and paced exploration into the role of Birth and Postnatal Doula, alongside adding some TIDE elements to your Doula bag.
The Deep Dive does what it says on the tin-we delve deeply into topics, have more time to digest and reflect, consider our own place in the work and how what we bring might help or hinder our practice.
You’ll learn about starting up your business, spend time with a breastfeeding specialist and more.
We have guest teachers, extra ‘story share’ sessions and invite you to develop a community that will last far beyond your course days.
We virtually meet for 2 hours each week on Zoom, there's a weekly set of coursework sent out by email, which includes working with your course mates in pairs or smaller groups, some reading and video-clip watching and then contributing to the next week's session. There's around 1.5 to 3 hours a week coursework, maximum.
We also offer a Whatsapp group where we connect during the week with chats, reflections, things that come up, questions and links we share.
Once a week there's also a 'Story Share' circle, where we come together to have time looking at our own birth stories, postnatal journeys, ideas for starting practice, dreams, thoughts, internal shifts and more. It's a drop-in and we choose a time that works for us all each week. It's a wonderful opportunity to share a more fluid and less educationally structured time and it provides a welcome pause in the week for us all. We bring tea, blankets, we light candles and we simply hang out, talking about ourselves as women, some of us as parents, as fledgling Doulas and all sorts. It's where a lot of magic takes place and some find it a healing space.
For example, on our most recent course, we chatted about the mother wound, being 'enough', fitting in our practice around other work and parenting commitments and more. We always have so much to talk about that it's a great extra space to share and provides the 'teabreak chats' that we miss by not being in-person.
Many people wonder how we cover the physical elements whilst online. Well, we give you links to watch demos and we talk you through, we try stuff out together whilst online (just simple stuff such as acupressure points on feet and lower legs) and we encourage you to try certain moves out at home, with friends and family. It works really well, as you have time to explore and investigate each technique, as we go.
All of our courses have a small piece of reflective pre-coursework for you to complete, but not to hand in, just to initiate a reflective practice and then 3 short pieces of post-coursework which are to hand in, but can be completed by voice note, artwork or in writing.
This course, as all of our Birthkeeping Doula courses, is fully certificated and accredited with Doula UK.
Our TIDE (Trauma Informed Doula Education) Course is a unique Birth Doula Training which includes the foundations of our usual Birth Doula Course curriculum, but extends to cover working with women and birthing people in disadvantage, using a Trauma Informed Toolkit.
This Course enables you to join Doula UK or Doulas Without Borders (DWB) or both. DWB is a Doula service in support of women and birthing. people in financial hardship who are experiencing trauma and disadvantage.
Many participants simply utilise the additional information provided in this training to support them in their service to paying clients and many will choose to offer both paid and voluntary services.
You’ll be a step ahead with TIDE, as you’ll have spent some time considering many approaches to offering Doula support and will also have all the same foundational training as your peers. We want you to feel confident to hold space for women and pregnant people on all their different journeys into motherhood.
We cover the same main topics as our other Birth Doula course, such as the physiology of labour, additionally providing you with a level of understanding and confidence in supporting women who have suffered traumatic times. We consider how best we might support pregnant women who have experienced rape, domestic abuse/survived intimate partner violence or suffered various forms of loss. We look at supporting a woman and her partner through a more complex journey into motherhood/parenthood, alongside supporting physiological birth in less complex settings.
In respect of the uniqueness of each individuals experience and to prevent us from ever presuming expertise, we use the model of Cultural humility and responsiveness and utilise a ‘beginners mind’ approach, rather than calling ourselves 'culturally competent'.
We look at some of the more common triggers during the childbearing year and consider how best to collaborate with our clients in creating practical and empowering strategies for labour and birth. We look at modified Birth Plans, discuss disclosure, safeguarding, debriefing, peer support, self care and more. These topics run alongside our usual learning for the course, enhancing your knowledge base to empower you to confidently work with a more varied client base.
https://www.doulaswithoutborders.comOur 5 day intensive in-person training / 12 week online classes cover:
- The Physiology of labour and birth, the positive feedback loop vs fear-tension-pain cycle
- What happens beyond fight or flight? Looking at the importance of the element of safety for those in chronic/complex trauma
- Working with your clients’ triggers and collaboratively creating strategies,
- Introducing the polyvagal curve and trauma response
- Recognising our own thresholds and developing resiliency
- How might you best support someone experiencing trauma response within the birth room?
- Cultural humility and responsiveness; considering our own cultural story and developing our awareness of other cultures; what needs, wishes, considerations and adversities?
- Practicing ‘beginners mind’ with unconditional positive regard; putting your clients expertise ahead of your own and trusting in the individual’s capacity to find their own best resource and tools
- Learn comfort measures for labour; ‘Medical, Clinical and Homegrown’ options, covering the medical models through to choices such as use of water birth and homeopathy, with consideration and awareness for working with survivors
- ‘Don't panic!’ A session on using trauma informed or imbued language; how language use can affect physiology
- New motherhood/parenthood and postnatal care; supporting women/parents in those tender early days of motherhood, towards self-care, bonding and attachment, integration, resilience and well-being
- Supporting infant feeding for survivors; considerations and conversations
- Joining Doula UK, Doulas Without Borders and more
- Setting up practice; coursework, pathways for next steps, marketing and advertising, codes of practice and confidentiality, ethos and guidelines
All of our courses have a small piece of reflective pre-coursework for you to complete, but not to hand in, just to initiate a reflective practice and then 3 short pieces of post-coursework which are to hand in, but can be completed by voice note, artwork or in writing.
You can find more about Doulas Without Borders at: www.doulaswithoutborders.com
