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PRENATAL CLASSES

Prenatal Classes for your Heart & Mind!

What makes Dancing Star Classes a good choice for your childbirth classes?

 

  • Small classes of 6 couples to ensure a personal approach

  • Stages of labour & birth

  • Birth physiology, understanding how your body works

  • Learn & practice pain-coping approaches and techniques

  • Creating a supportive environment at home and hospital

  • Affirming partner’s role and needs

  • Birth plan outline specific to your location

  • Birth fears, cesarean birth, and informed consent

  • Medication options, hospital information, working with your medical team

  • Baby care basics & breastfeeding

  • Postpartum health and transition to parenthood

  • Fun, skillful, knowledgeable facilitators

  • Special PDF Resource Guide with community coupon codes

  • Exclusive pain-coping audio track for practice at home

What is the Curriculum?

Class 1

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  • Where do you get your information from?

  • Medical Provider Overview 

  • Community Providers

  • Place of Birth - When to go to the hospital!  

  • Birth Movie

  • Comfort Measures

  • Pregnancy Tips

 

Class 2

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  • Early Labour / Physiology of Birth

  • Hormones of birth

  • Phases of Birth 

  • Comfort Measures - Breath Awareness, Sounds, Touch

  • How to be a supportive birth partner

  • Newborn Sleep

 

Class 3

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  • Early Labour​

    • What does it feel like?

    • What is happening in your body

    • What do you do during this phase?

    • What the partner can do during this phase

  • Active Labour

    • What does it feel like?

    • What is happening in your body

    • What do you do during this phase?

    • What the partner can do during this phase

    • Comfort Measures

  • Pushing

    • What does it feel like?

    • What is happening in your body

    • What do you do during this phase?

  • ​Comfort Measures - Hip Squeeze, Pressure Points, Doula Tricks

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Class 4

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  • First 2 hours after birth

  • Newborn  

  • Placenta  

  • First Feeds

  • First 24 Hours with your Newborn

  • Caesarean Birth

  • Postpartum Tips

 

Class 5

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  • Informed Consent 

  • How to communicate with your medical team

  • Using BRAIN

  • Number 1 Dancing Star Birth Rule

  • Pain Management

  • Non-Medical Comfort Measures

  • Medications: Nitrous oxide, Morphine, Fentanyl and Epidural

  • Birth Plans

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Class 6

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  • Comforting your Newborn

  • Diapering​

  • Babywearing

  • Bathing your baby

  • Preparing for your Newborn 

  • Feeding your Baby

  • Soothing your baby 

  • Breastfeeding Basics

  • How to breastfeed your baby

  • How to know if your newborn is getting enough?

  • First 6 weeks with your newborn

  • Community Support

 

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What Makes Us Unique?


Like most prenatal classes, we cover:

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  • Stages of labour

  • Fetal positioning  

  • Comfort measures – TENS, tapes, visualizations, water, acupuncture  

  • Physical labour support – massage and positions

  • Timing – calling care providers, going to the hospital

  • Pain medications – options and procedures

  • Cesarean birth – what to expect

  • The first 24 hours

  • Breastfeeding

  • Babycare

  • Postpartum – recovery and healing

 

However, we also go further, and cover: 

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  • Hormones of labour

  • Pain coping practices

  • Emotional labour support – communication and creating a connection

  • Pain medication – tips for partners, making the choice

  • Coping with anxiety and fear

  • Dealing with the unexpected

  • Building a positive dynamic with your care team 

  • Informed consent and informed decision making

  • Culture of birth – opinions, and expectations

  • Cesarean birth – enhancing the OR birth experience

  • Postpartum – partner support

  • Inclusion and roles of the birth partners

  • Community resources.

Our Facilitators

We handpicked this fantastic team of doulas, facilitators and mentors to support your family.

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Morag Hastings

Owner and Facilitator

Morag is an educator, doula and birth photographer from Galiano Island off the coast of B.C. where she grew up viewing birth as a normal, natural process. As a mother of three, Morag has the first-hand experience in what it’s like to be a birthing woman and new parent. She always shares this insight with extremely refreshing, no-holds-barred honesty and humour.

 

Her work with her busy doula and birth photography business, Apple Blossom Families has not only helped individual families to have more positive births but also has been hugely successful at increasing awareness of normal birth and breastfeeding practices through her photography since 2010.

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Dori Harrison

Facilitator

Dori brings warm and practical energy to all that she does. As an artist and mother, she has an amazing ability to tap into the power of both intuition and self-belief, and to share this power with those in her classes. With a wide and open smile, Dori helps new families consider how they might cope with the unknown experiences of birth and new parenting.

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Jessica Medrea

Facilitator

Jessica is a birth doula and childbirth educator with a passion for helping families have positive birth experiences. Her style is pragmatic, direct and non-judgemental. She values evidence-based information and her goal is to give new families knowledge and confidence about the childbirth process so they can go into it feeling positive and well-informed. In addition to her work teaching and as a doula, Jessica is a mother of a young child and a volunteer with the Doula Services Association of BC. She cares about community building and has focused her work in her local area of  East Vancouver.

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Nikki Pataracchia

 Facilitator

Childbirth educator located in New Westminster. 

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Judy McLaren

BIrthing From Within

Mentor

I am a seasoned birth doula, breastfeeding counselor, and a certified Birthing from Within childbirth educator. Always having an interest in maternal health, I was drawn into full time birth work through the quality care I received in my first birth, now a seasoned mother of three wonderful children. Birthing from Within has truly revolutionized my Doula care, facilitating, mentoring and motherhood. I love how it helps you go beyond the surface to your intuitive knowing, and offers a chance to practice the mindset needed to birth, no matter what happens and no matter what you decide. 

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