10/25/2025
❗️"5 tips for an easier labor!"
❗️"Want a faster labor? Follow my 3 tips!"
❗️"Prepare for your birth with 5 simple steps!"
Wow! That's so easy, you mean if I just do these 3 things and check off these 5 boxes, I'll be prepared for my birth?!?
I must admit, I'm gonna be the bearer of a reality check that is sometimes hard to hear: You cannot effectively prepare for your birth by following a couple quick tips recommended on Facebook or by watching a few birth reels on Instagram. Real birth preparation is not about drinking special teas or taking a supplement to "naturally ripen your cervix." It's also not about eating dates or holding a comb during labor. With the rise in popularity of short-form content, I often say to my childbirth class participants, "You cannot effectively prepare for your birth by just checking off a few boxes or watching a few reels."
🪻Effective birth preparation takes time. It requires that expectant parents do the work & invest not just time but also their energy.
🪻Effective birth preparation involves emotional preparation where participants can identify their fears about birth, postpartum, and parenting and start to work thru those fears. Emotional preparation for birth is not a "soft skill," but rather, a foundational skill for your birth. In fact, your emotional state can directly impact the way your labor progresses!
🪻Effective birth preparation involves things like unlearning beliefs and habits that may actually interfere with your body's ability to labor effectively.
🪻Effective birth preparation involves learning how to surrender: surrender to the labor process, relinquishing control over all the unknowns in birth, practicing letting go, and so much more. We are immersed in a culture that loooooves to be in control. So the preparation to surrender and let go during labor is a very gradual process that simply will not happen overnight.
🪻Effective birth preparation invites people to learn strategies that will allow them to work *with* their bodies during labor vs "fighting" or resisting what their body is doing. Learning to work with your body takes time and that type of preparation cannot be squeezed into a "one day express childbirth class."
🪻Effective birth preparation will also encourage participants to then take those strategies and PRACTICE them regularly so that their muscles develop a memory of, "This is what I do during labor." If the nervous system and muscles are used to doing things like shallow breathing and holding onto tension, that is likely what they will do during labor, too. We have to gradually practice creating new habits within our body's memory.
When our childbirth class participants prepare for birth in all the above ways and more, it *completely transforms* how they feel going into their birth! And perhaps even more importantly, it greatly impacts their overall birth experience! When other birth professionals, such as L&D nurses, midwives, OBs, and doulas, work with our childbirth class participants during their labors/births, they tell us over and over JUST how well-prepared our class participants are for birth. Time and again, these birth professionals have personally witnessed what a dramatic difference our childbirth classes have on laboring women & and their partners! L&D nurses will often times say, "It's really obvious to us which patients have effectively prepared for their births and which have not."
While I know it might feel tempting to just follow a couple labor tips shared by a social media influencer, that's not likely to have any significant impact on your birth. Invest in effective birth preparation by taking one of our childbirth classes. The difference it will make for your birth & beyond is truly profound and sometimes even described as "life-changing" by our childbirth class participants!
Our next 10 Week Group Classes start soon:
✅️ Wednesday Class, starting 10/29
✅️ Monday Class, starting 11/10
All sign-up info found in the comments. ⬇️ Can't make a group class work? We also offer private classes!
