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The International Birth and Wellness Project (IBWP) certifies childbirth educators, and trains them using the materials developed by its former incarnation ALACE (the Association of Labor Assistants and Childbirth Educators.) ALACE-trained educators provide a comprehensive consumer-based class that will enable women and their partners to prepare for a positive, safe and joyful birth experience. The program was developed by midwives and is recognized for its holistic, women-centered approach. The classes provide evidence based information about the birth process and provide the tools to empower women and their partners to make informed choices throughout pregnancy and birth. Classes are usually held separately from hospitals, in order to focus solely on the needs of the expectant family.

Your instructor is Diana McCleery, an IBWP-certified Childbirth Educator.We'll discuss a wide range of topics in our classes.

IBWP childbirth educators respect birth as a woman-centered and woman-directed passage. Our goal is to help women reclaim trust in their ability to safely and dependably give birth. Our programs have been developed and guided principally by women -- women who are midwives, childbirth educators, mothers, and natural birth advocates.

Woman-centered childbirth recognizes the primary role of the mother, and allows labor to progress according to the mother's natural rhythms. Appleseeds Childbirth Education stresses the importance of respecting the mother's lifestyle, as well as instincts and choices about how to give birth, including positions for labor and birth, use of pain relief, comfort measures, and choice of caregivers and support. Classes will respect the partner's role in pregnancy and birth, and acknowledge that the partner's or father's experience of preganancy and birth is important and life-changing in its own right.

• I'm now the Minneapolis Pregnancy Examiner on examiner.com. If you have any suggestions for topics you'd like to see me address, feel free! I have to be able to link them in locally, but it shouldn't be hard as a general rule. This will pay me a pittance, but even more importantly I'll get writing practice and know more about my local community, pregnancy-wise. I'm very excited. :)
• The next class series starts soon, at my home in Minneapolis, in the Longfellow neighborhood. Contact me or check back here for more details as they arise. I will likely arrange class days and times in consultation with interested students, so drop me a line or e-mail. :)
• I'm slated to repeat "Nutrition in Pregnancy" at the Wedge and Seward Co-ops in early fall. I'm waiting to hear back from Minneapolis Continuing Education, which may carry my entire series. I'm also working on a two-hour class "Pregnancy and Birth as Initiation" which I hope to present soon at alternative bookstores.