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.
We recommend completing your classes by your 35th gestational week.
*Both classes are included in our Birth Bundle and our Birth and Beginnings Bundle. Please check your confirmation email for links to register for your class.
To sign up for classes a la carte, please fill out this form.
Childbirth Prep Class
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 (including Newborn Care and Infant Feeding)
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
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.