Description
Why Take This Course?
You and your baby will experience birth together. This course gives you the pathway to work with yourself, your body, and your baby. Doing this program, you’ll increase your range of motion in your body. You are able to move with more ease, and perhaps, your baby is likely to move with more ease, too. Feel comfort today and have more ease in your birth process. The course includes printable downloads to chart your activities, share with your provider, reflect on your experiences, and remind you of techniques.
Table of Contents
- Intro to Course
- Birth Anatomy
- Daily Activities
- Rest SmartSM
- The Three BalancesSM
- Invitations to Act
- Baby Positions
- Labor and Birth
- Birth Positions
- Course Materials
- Who Can Help Me?
- What Else Do You Have?
You can add this course to the all around childbirth information in your childbirth education whether that is from Lamaze, ICEA, Pain to Power, Calm Birth, Hypnobabies, Hypnobirthing, Commonsense Childbirth, or another wonderful childbirth education program.
Gail Tully, the creator of Spinning Babies® and her advisors created this program to support birthing parents to have techniques and confidence in their own bodies. In this online course, you’ll also meet Jennifer Walker, the first Director of the Certified Parent Educator program, and your Instructors, Emma Moreland, Spinning Babies® Trainer; and Paula Roufs, Spinning Babies® Certified Parent Educator Instructor. Special appearance by Tema Mercado, Midwife and Spinning Babies® Approved Trainer.
Can Someone Work With Me Personally?
Additional support can be found by working with a Spinning Babies® Certified Parent Educator. They meet with you in person or help you online when you are in their private or small group class. Find out more here.
The benefits of working with an individual Certified Parent Educator:
- A personal relationship with a Certified Parent Educator to learn this program
- Personal guidance to help you do stretches correctly
- Guidance and support for your birth helper to assist you correctly and confidently
- Connection to a person who keeps up-to-date in the concepts and techniques
If you have unusual concerns about your health, you may wish to consult your doctor or midwife, a physical therapist, exercise specialist or an experienced prenatal yoga instructor for safe and correct adaptations. The cost of working with a Spinning Babies® Certified Parent Educator is not included with purchase of this course.
Is It Safe?
Consult your provider when starting an exercise program. Let them know we don’t use manipulation of the baby. The word “Spinning” is not something we do. Baby does the spinning. “Spinning” means the turns that a baby makes to get into position for birth and, then, travel through the pelvis.
Babies “spin” when the space in the body is made available. We offer techniques to make room for baby. One exercise includes getting upside down and coming up again. A few people shouldn’t go upside down due to high blood pressure or another risk. Look at all the contraindications and check with your doctor or midwife. We take a careful approach and want you to be safe. If you aren’t sure, don’t do it.
Tips to help you feel good about using this course:
- Put the url to open a tab with this class on your browser
- Put notifications on your calendar to remind you to watch this course, do the daily activities, and a reminder a week or two before the course expires.
- Create an activities area in your home with your daily activities materials
Daily Activities Materials
- Yoga mat
- Stretchy band or cloth belt
- 2 Pillows and a bolster or a third pillow (firm to sit on)
- Yoga block, pool noodle (thicker than half the length of your foot), or rolled towel
- Chair
- A place where you can prop up your device for watching as you do activities
- Your water bottle or glass of water to sip throughout
You are Welcome Here
Are you about to welcome a baby? Whether you are a birthing parent or the supporting one, you are birthing into parenthood. You may be a grandparent supporting your child who is giving birth. Or, you may be a friend learning how to help your birthing loved one.
You may feel comfortable with the setting of the class and the people participating in our filmed sections. Or, you may feel underrepresented in our course by people who look like you. I want you to know you are more welcome than we show. We certainly want everyone to be welcome, held in high regard, and felt to be significant and seen.
We use phrases like, “birthing person” or “pregnant parent” as well as continuing to use birthing woman or mother, and mother and baby occasionally. Sometimes we are talking about the general population which includes some people giving birth but not planning to be parents, and may include some people who don’t identify themselves as a woman. Two women may be a child’s parents or neither parent may be a woman. We seek phrases that include everyone and we preserve phrases that say women, woman or mother. We don’t believe we have to exclude one for the other.
We use the American spellings and recognize that English is often spelled differently for the other English speaking world. We honor the “u” in labour and other words like behaviour and humour, but you will see a lonely “o” here, as in labor. We switch the “s” and “z” as in organization. And we flip the re in theatre. Mind the gap.
Anti-racism
Spinning Babies® is led by a white, working class woman who uses the pronouns, she, her and hers. Our desire is to be anti-racist and anti-homophobic. We could do better in representation for all skin tones and LGBTQIA+ and all types of families. Our vulnerability is that some of us, at times, Gail included, blunder with social conventions including her nations embedded white supremacy. We seek to improve a sense of safety for all birthing parents. We’d prefer not to use stock photos. If you would like to share birth and early parenting highlights of your beautiful Brown and Black family photos, we would feel so mutually supported.
Whoever you are, we hope that increasing your interactions with your own physiology allows you a re-birth of close connection with yourself and this child you are welcoming. We hope this course helps attachment and bonding, a sense of pride in yourself, and a better understanding of life and life more abundantly.
Bias
Today a common phrase is that the doctor delivers your baby, actually you do. We don’t say “deliver your baby”. We don’t blame anyone for saying that, we just veer towards saying, “birthing your baby.”
Such a bias might be confused with being anti-doctor or pro-midwife. Actually we are pro-physiology. Don’t confuse physiological birth with someone giving birth in the bushes. Though that could be glorious. At the same time, we realize not everyone is safe to have a purely physiological birth. Some people have a health risk, others choose not to. We support finding the physiology nearest your experience and restoring body function -with compassion not ideology. Therefore, this class will offer positions in both upright and lying down positions to include those having an epidural or otherwise not able to be on their feet.
We do have a bias towards speaking to expectant and birthing parents. We certainly welcome those who give birth to children they won’t parent so they, too, may explore birth physiology. We also honor a planned cesarean birth. Many people have cesareans today for many reasons and we don’t wish a moral judgment to reduce the beauty of birth in any of its wonderous forms. We hope all our participants will enjoy the pregnancy comfort measures! Everyone here is welcome and celebrated.
Our Paradigm
Our Physiology Before Force paradigm begins in touch, moves to language, and emerges fully when we are unable to sustain an us/them or domination mind set. Physiology is healthiest when the body is in harmony with itself. Pain can result from exercising in new ways, in dilation of the cervix, and in adjusting to equity. We have compassion for all of us on this journey. We invite our community to explore non-violent communication, self-talk or with others, and the benefits of social equity in the body of humanity.
Physiology Before Force means we recognize interventions are sometimes necessary. And we believe vaginal birth has hormonal benefits for the beginning of parenting and even the whole life of the family and individual. A goal of each birth is that the baby is welcomed with awareness of their intelligence, need for skin-to-skin contact at birth, and a more intact sense of belonging. Bonding and attachment are the dynamic interactions which motivated Gail to start her birth journey and continue all these years.
Before You Begin
We want you to be able to get the most from this course. Awareness of what you want to get out of participating in this course will help you focus your motivation. Daily practice gives more benefit. We understand you may miss a day now and again. If you’re like many people, the repetition will be necessary for the benefits to be felt in labor.
However much you practice, or even if you never do, you are welcome here. We do however want you to experience all that birth has to offer you. You came here because you think birth is important, after all. Let’s do this together.
Join us now
You can begin this course at any time in your pregnancy. Some of the exercises will wait until 2nd trimester to keep you and baby safe. There is also information on what to do during labor. You can literally start this course any time and get tips for what to do now in your pregnancy or labor.
I wanted to hate it because I felt it would replace my chances of doing in-person classes. But [Gail] and Emma were just so engaging, supportive, and connected to the teaching and patient interaction…I loved it. Depending on the cost to clients I will for sure be providing the link to all our birthing families and making a poster for the offices so that they can purchase it…I love how even the brief introductions to each segment were done with such a positive intentional spirit you never felt like it was scripted, read, or memorized. They were honest heartfelt invitations to continue. Keep on doing all that you do to support birthing families and nurture knowledge in those of us that care for them. – Shauna G.
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