Educating and equipping through compassionate connection
This is the childbirth education you'll need if you want a different outcome. This one-day intensive explodes the myths that keep us in birth-fright and takes a deep dive into the science of safe and joyous birth. Called 'life-changing', this workshop equips you with a new approach to childbirth that will have you heaving a sigh of relief, laughing until your sides hurt, and leaving with a spring in your step filled with hope and optimism. You'll meet some awesome people who are on the same journey and understand where you've been and believe in your hopes and plans for the future.
Next workshops
Saturday October 21, 2023
Sunday October 22, 2023
In person only. Kitchener Ontario.
Birth Trauma Ontario exists in response to the global crisis of mistreatment in childbirth and birth-related trauma. Although we are centred in Ontario, we are part of a connected global community that is working together to change how women are experiencing pregnancy and birth. Mistreatment in childbirth spans every culture, every demographic, and every socioeconomic status. It's not an 'over there' issue, but rather a 'right here' concern. Birth Trauma Ontario is an advocate for the prevention of birth-related trauma through trauma informed education and skills development, and in the creation of viable maternity care alternatives.
Research has provided us with the necessary information and parameters for addressing birth-related trauma and obstetric violence with comprehensive and compassionate solutions. With about 1/3 to 1/2 of maternity care consumers having a traumatic experience and postpartum suicide as a related consequence, the need for a new approach to maternity care is dire. Birth Trauma Ontario provides researched and comprehensive consultations, online training in the skills of trauma informed care, and collaborates in the training of skilled Traditional Birth Companions.
After a traumatic experience, postpartum PTSD can persist for years if not recognised and addressed. It negatively impacts the sufferer with flashbacks, sleep issues, as well as possible issues with returning to work, health-related problems, relationship problems, and bonding and care concerns with their baby. Birth Trauma Ontario provides consultations and education for parents and loved ones to help them understand the causes and consequences of birth-related trauma and positive steps for moving forward to healing and recovery. Mothers are invited to join our closed facebook group for compassion, understanding, and peer support.
Professional consultations, webinars, seminars, and workshops are available for care providers, allied health care providers, birth-related professionals, clinics, training organisations, birthing units, educators and more to provide professional development in the understanding of traumatic birth experiences, trauma in the perinatal client, and skills development in trauma-informed care specific to the perinatal client. Professionals can also benefit from professional development in resilience-based client care, understanding secondary and vicarious trauma, burnout, and strategies for recovery. Individual and group sessions are available.
Parents and loved ones can also benefit from targeted consultations that help them to piece together and understand what transpired that contributed to their traumatic experience. Birth-related trauma and its consequences can begin to make sense when it's viewed through a research-based perspective that also explains why the symptoms of trauma look like they do. Consultations can help identify healing strategies and steps for moving forward.
Those who are hoping to conceive or are planning a birth after trauma can work through their concerns and come up with a plan that works for them.
How maternity services are delivered have undergone a significant shift in recent years as we've adopted a near-universal institutional-based technocratic model. While most everyone survives this model, not everyone thrives. High rates of mistreatment, primary, secondary, and vicarious trauma, burnout, postpartum PTSD, and suicide tells us the time is now to adopt a new approach to delivering maternity services.
Trauma-informed skills not only benefit the client, but also benefit the clinician. The benefits of trauma-informed care include reduced medical errors, increased client participation in their own care, increased diagnostic accuracy, reduced cynicism, reduced rates of burnout, and a near-elimination of disrespectful care and birth-related trauma.
Trauma-informed skills are for everyone who interacts with birthing clients, including midwives, nurses, physicians, doulas, childbirth educators, advocates, allied health care providers, parents and loved ones.
Sign up for more news from Birth Trauma Ontario. Hear about upcoming workshops for becoming a trauma-informed professional.
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