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Foundations of Mindful Birthing
Walk beside expectant parents, then bring the skills back to your practice.
Foundations invites you to “sit inside” a Mindful Birthing classroom—so you can witness how mindfulness shifts fear, stress, and pain into presence, confidence, and care. You’ll learn practical tools for the parents you serve and for your own well-being.
Why to
take Foundations?
Parents are arriving with higher stress, less community, and fewer workable tools. Professionals are facing burnout. Foundations gives you evidence-aligned practices you can use immediately, both in busy visits and at home, to reduce suffering and build resilience for families and providers.
You’ll learn to:
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Support parents in meeting labor sensations with steadiness (decoupling pain from suffering)
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Coach simple, effective practices for stress, fear, and rumination during pregnancy and postpartum
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Strengthen healthy parent–infant attachment and partner communication
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Sustain your own presence and reduce compassion fatigue
First-hand experience with Mindful Birthing
Be a participant-observer inside Mindful Birthing—either through archival classroom videos with founder Nancy Bardacke, CNM, which place you “in the room” with expectant parents as the curriculum unfolds, or in a recent live Zoom cohort with Claire Zawa, CD (DONA), MBCPTc. Between sessions, you’ll deepen your learning with weekly practice and readings.
Then meet live for dialogic seminars: five 2.5-hour online sessions (every three weeks) with certified MBCP Faculty to translate the work into your context through discussion, Q&A, and coaching. Between meetings, an online forum provides resources and peer exchange.
Note: Foundations is the first step in the three-phase Mindful Birthing Teacher Training pathway. Although you are not certified to teach Mindful Birthing, you can apply this to your practice immediately.
Learning
Objectives
By the end, you can:
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Describe how mindfulness supports pregnancy, labor, birth, and healthy attachment
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Explain how formal/informal practices engage executive function to shift unhelpful patterns
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List the five intentions within Mindful Birthing
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Describe how mindfulness reframes fear and pain in childbirth, reducing suffering
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Discuss mindfulness skills for postpartum adjustment and early parenting stress
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Summarize documented physical, psychological, and relational benefits reported in the literature
Who is this for?
Midwives • Doulas • Nurses (L&D, OB) • Lactation Consultants • Social Workers • OBGYNs • Childbirth Educators • Perinatal Mental-Health Providers • Birth Coaches • Allied Perinatal Professionals
Continuing Education Hours
Participants receive 25 ACNM CE hours upon completion (certificate provided after course evaluation).
These hours are often accepted or applicable toward continuing education by related boards/organizations such as NCC, State Boards of Nursing (e.g., AL, CA, FL), NARM, AANP, AAFP, ACPE, CAPPA, Evidence Based Birth®, and DONA International. Please confirm applicability with your licensing/credentialing body.
