When it comes to choosing a birthing class, expectant parents can easily become overwhelmed by the varied menu of options. There are a number of styles and methods available, each one with a focus on different practices and beliefs. Consider this a “Cliffs Notes” of childbirth prep courses to briefly highlight the main aspects of each method.
While the idea of Lamaze classes often conjures up the image of a woman panting to a dictated rhythm, that’s far from the reality of Lamaze today. Lamaze International, as it’s now referred to, focuses on providing evidence-based research to help women build confidence and find good support while making decisions about how they approach pregnancy, birth, and motherhood.
Lamaze classes:
*Support evidence-based pregnancy and birth practices that are endorsed by research and experienced childbirth educators.
*Guide expectant parents as they navigate all of the birthing options, their benefits, and drawbacks.
*Seek to empower women as they explore how their bodies are designed for birth and encourage them to work with the body’s natural abilities.
*Provide strategies for natural pain management during labor, reducing unnecessary
medical interventions, and ensure that moms feel continuously supported during labor and birth.
*Stress the importance of natural pain management strategies through labor and birth, helping couples choose methods that are safe and healthy.
*Encourage bonding between mother and baby, with the importance of skin-to-skin contact and time to get to know baby after birth.
The structure of a Lamaze Class is 12-15 hours, usually 6 classes of 2-2.5 hours each. Lamaze teachers are also responsible for creating the outline of their own class, and class styles may vary as long as the required Lamaze Childbirth Education material is included and covered. In my experience, Lamaze is the most “middle of the road” method. It’s more factual and less experiential than some of the other methods. You’re not likely to be spending lots of time on visualizations, birth art, or explorations of birth fears.
Taught in a strict 12-week class series, there’s a specific week by week curriculum that each certified Bradley Method follows. This method is very strongly focused on natural birth and including the partner as the “birth coach.”
The Bradley Method describes itself as “a system of natural labor techniques in which a woman and her coach play an active part. It is a simple method of increasing self-awareness, teaching a woman how to deal with the stress of labor by tuning in to her own body. The Bradley Method encourages mothers to trust their bodies using natural breathing, relaxation, nutrition, exercise, and education.”
Like the Lamaze method, Bradley Method also focuses on the fundamentals of pregnancy and nutrition as well as the anatomy and physiology of the different stages of labor, variations and complications, and postpartum health. There is also a whole class dedicated to constructing a birth plan. Participants also receive a 130-page study guide.
This method may not be suited for couples who are not focused on a drug-free birth experience.
Using relaxation and hypnotic techniques to move birthing mothers into a state of relaxation, HypnoBirthing helps the body to open without fear and trust the natural process of birth. This philosophy of HypnoBirthing® is based on breaking the fear-tension-pain cycle. Basically, when a person is fearful, the mental and physiological response is to become tense. Tension causes a person’s sympathetic nervous system to increase the heart rate, shorten breath, and constrict blood flow. When the body is tense, pain is felt more intensely. If the laboring woman can feel more confident and trust the natural birthing process, the fear is removed and her body will be more relaxed, leaving her feeling less pain.
HypnoBirthing doesn’t claim to put the mother in a trance or to sleep. As they explain it: “What you will experience is similar to the daydreaming, or focusing, that occurs when you are engrossed in a book or a movie or staring into a fire. In this calm state, your body’s natural relaxant, endorphins, replaces the stress hormones that constrict and cause pain.” To achieve this outcome, this system relies heavily on the couple practicing relaxation and visualization techniques that are given in class.
The structure of HypnoBirthing is similar to The Bradley Method, in which there is a set curriculum. HypnoBirthing is a 5-week program with each class running 2.5 hours long.
NB: I would also like to point out, there’s very little focus on anatomy and physiology of the different stages of labor taught in the HypnoBirthing system. Since they don’t cover many variations and complications of labor and cesarean births, I would consider HypnoBirthing® more of a pain management technique rather than a full childbirth education class. Granted, I’m a certified Lamaze teacher, I think it’s important for women and their partners to understand the broad scope of what labor will look like and have several pain management techniques to choose from in case one specific method doesn’t work.
This is the exact opposite of HypnoBirthing in that classes aren’t about relaxing or “pain-free” birth. No need to bring pillows: you will not be relaxing, because the truth of labor is that it’s hard work and you may move better through labor by being upright, active, dancing, rocking, or sitting. You and your partner will learn about coping with pain and the challenges of labor and have lots of time to practice together. In their own words: “BIRTHING FROM WITHIN is not outcome-focused. In other words, we do not promise that if you practice or believe in a certain thing, you will achieve a specific result. Your positive actions and intentions will influence your body-mind, but there is no way of knowing just how.”
BIRTHING FROM WITHIN is strongly based in approaching childbirth through a spiritual and holistic preparation. This method encourages the mother to explore her feelings around birth through “birth art” and discover more about herself.
Classes cover:
*Experiencing birth as a rite of passage
*Eating a sound diet (pregnancy and breastfeeding)
*Opening the body-mind before and during labor with self-hypnosis and visualizations
*Building confidence in yourself and your partner
*Asking questions and making decisions in labor
*Protecting your birth space
*Taming your “Birth Tigers”
*Pushing your baby out
*Welcoming your baby
*Recovering and planning postpartum
*Caring for and feeding your newborn
*Giving birth from within during a Cesarean, while using pain medication or with medical support
BIRTHING FROM WITHIN believes the essence of childbirth education is self-discovery, not assimilating obstetric information. Following in this philosophy, they don’t offer research-based information about birth or the specific routines and policies of the hospital. They suggest if you’re looking for this information, to take a supplemental Lamaze or Bradley class, read an evidence-based book about birth, or ask the “mentor” for additional information. Their focus is experiential, focusing on spiritual and holistic childbirth preparation. Classes do not follow a specific curriculum; parents’ individual needs and differences determine class content.
International Childbirth Education Association (ICEA)
ICEA is a professional organization supports educators and other health care providers who believe in freedom to make decisions based on knowledge of alternatives in family-centered maternity and newborn care. ICEA is very similar to Lamaze in the practice of presenting evidence-based research, fully covering the anatomical and philosophical changes of pregnancy, teaching the different stages of labor pain management techniques, and reviewing interventions and complications and covering postpartum care.
“ICEA strongly supports the arrival of a baby is very much a ‘family affair.’ ICEA believes family-centered care consists of an attitude rather than a protocol. It recognizes a vital life event rather than a medical procedure. It appreciates the importance of that event to the woman and the people who are important to her. It respects the woman’s individuality and her sense of autonomy. It realizes that the decisions she may make are based on many influences of which the expertise of the professional is only one. It requires that all relevant information be made available to the woman to help her achieve her own goals, and that she be guided but not directed by professionals she has chosen to share the responsibility for her care.”
BirthWorks classes are based on the philosophy that every woman is born with the instinctual knowledge about how to give birth. One component that sets BirthWorks® apart from some of the other methods is the strong focus on pelvic bodywork and optimal fetal positioning. They spend several classes focusing on this topic. The belief is that if the pelvis is well aligned, the baby will move into an optimal position which leads to a more efficient labor.
BirthWorks is taught in an 8-week series. The classes are interactive and experiential, providing both an academic and an emotional preparation for birth. BirthWorks® does cover the “basics” like medical procedures, VBACS, indications of a cesarean, birthing positions while also including a holistic approaching by encouraging participants to express fears about birth-related feelings. From my understanding it seems like a combo of BIRTHING FROM WITHIN and ICEA or Lamaze.
I hope that this brief breakdown of six different birthing techniques will help you decide what is right for you. Happy birthing!
For more reading, see “Childbirth Education Classes” and “The Importance of Continuing Labor Support.”
Debra Flashenberg is the founder of the Prenatal Yoga Center. After spending much of her life in musical theater, she was introduced to yoga in 1997 and has since become a certified doula. Lamaze coach, midwife, and certified vinyasa yoga instructor. She is continuously in awe of the beauty and brilliance of birth and is the proud mother of baby boy Shay.
