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Our Classes

DC Birth Doulas offers fun and functional perinatal education classes. Our live virtual classes are taught by trained childbirth educators, who bring their wealth of hands-on experience in perinatal health into our interactive and lively sessions. Our classes focus on evidence-based information while creating space to discuss practical experience, tips and preferences.


To sign up for classes a la carte, please fill out this form.

Childbirth Prep Class

Pregnant woman sitting in a childbirth class practicing breathing and meditation

Our 6-hour class focuses on the labor and birth process. A growing body of evidence suggests that families who attend a comprehensive childbirth education class which covers shared decision making and allows time to practice comfort measures are more satisfied with their births. We will cover normal physiological birth, common medical tools and hospital procedures, comfort measures, labor positions, pain medication options, and cesarean birth.


Classes include videos of stages of birth, group work with plenty of time to ask questions and actively explore comfort measures such as grounding touch, mindfulness, and breathing techniques.


You can select either a 1-DAY CLASS (Saturday 10am-4:45pm) option or a 3-EVENING CLASS (Mondays 6:30-8:30pm) option. We recommend taking our Childbirth Class in your second trimester.

  • Stages of physiological birth

  • Common medical tools and hospital procedures

  • Comfort measures

  • Labor positions

  • Pain medication options

  • Shared informed decision making 

  • Variations such as inductions and cesarean birth

Postpartum Prep Class

Chelsea-Birth-2019-Tara-Olson-Photography-9999 web_edited.jpg

Our 6-hour Postpartum Prep Class is designed to help you prepare for your transition into parenthood. We will share information on managing expectations, exploring strategies to avoid common pitfalls, discussing tips to cope, treat, recover, and heal, and generally build skills to help you adapt during the fourth trimester.


We also focus on the practical realities of feeding an infant. Many of our clients want to feed their babies breastmilk exclusively. The reality is that most feed their babies through some combination of body feeding, pumping, and bottle feeding.


You can select a 1-DAY CLASS (Saturday 10am-4:45pm) option or a 3-EVENING CLASS (Thursdays 6:30-8:30pm) option. We recommend taking our Postpartum Prep Class in your third trimester. 

  • First Hours After Birth

  • Postpartum Wellness - Physical, Social, and Emotional Care

  • Infant Soothing, Attachment, & Care

  • Sleep Expectations, Realities, and Safety

  • Managing Family Wellbeing - Intimacy, Nutrition, Exercise

  • Human Lactation

  • Pumping and Storing Milk

  • Selecting, Preparing, and Using Formula

  • Bottle and Nipple Selection and Care

  • Tips for Combination Feeding

Our Classes: Services

Why we teach our classes virtually

Are you missing gathering together in person for classes and events? So are we! We love and miss working with and getting to know our clients in person. However, while our initial shift to virtual services was in response to the pandemic, we have found that teaching live classes on a virtual platform offers both our clients and our educators a number of advantages over in-person gatherings and aligns more directly with our values as a company, including:


  • Accessibility: Our clients are a diverse and professional population. Virtual classes allow everyone to join classes wherever they are on any given day of the week, watch recordings of classes if they are not able to make it to one of the sessions, and fit classes into the end of a work day.

  • Safety: Pregnant persons are considered a high risk population - with a higher risk of maternal morbidity and mortality associated with Covid-19. We have made the decision as a company that we want to do our part to limit opportunities for clients to be exposed to potential infections. We join clients in person when we are not able to do our work virtually (for birth and postpartum support). However, when we are able to do our work virtually, we are prioritizing safety and health.

  • Sustainability: One of our core values is sustainability. Eliminating carbon emissions and commuting time for class members and educators contributes to both a more sustainable environment and work/life balance for everyone involved.

  • Resources: The digital content that we have created for our virtual classes provides supplemental resources, including short video clips modeling positions, that are now conveniently available for clients to re-watch during pregnancy and early labor - just in case you don’t catch it all the first time.

  • Adaptability: Virtual learning allows each participant to create their own best learning environment - wear comfortable clothing, use their own pillows and blankets, take movement, snack or bathroom breaks as needed. 

  • Personal Connection: We find that being able to speak and connect face to face on a virtual platform allows us to connect more easily with a group of clients than we would if we were gathering together in person wearing and trying to communicate while wearing masks. Our educators are able to communicate and read facial expressions and hear responses from our clients more clearly without the necessary but sometimes cumbersome barrier of a mask. We also offer weekly virtual pregnancy and postpartum group gathering (“circles”) to help facilitate connection and community.

"DC Birth Doulas were amazing! They supported us from the beginning of the pregnancy and then beyond with their prenatal class, newborn class, months of phone and email support, and finally in-person care at the hospital and postpartum follow up. All throughout, they helped us understand both what would physically and emotionally happen (and how we could prepare to meet our new baby) as well as the logistics of the process."

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