Childbirth Educator Professional Training

Who this is for

Aspiring and practicing childbirth educators, doulas, nurses, midwives, lactation professionals, and community educators who want to design and teach comprehensive prenatal classes.

What you will learn

• Define childbirth educator scope, ethics, informed-consent principles, bias management, and referral responsibilities.
• Use adult-learning theory, universal-design/accessibility principles, health literacy, facilitation, teach-back, and evaluation to teach diverse learners.
• Explain healthy pregnancy, fetal development, prenatal care, common tests, warning signs, birth settings, and local maternity-system options.
• Teach labor physiology, hormones, fetal positioning, stages, normal variations, pushing, placental birth, and immediate postpartum transition.
• Demonstrate and teach a wide range of comfort, coping, movement, breathing, touch, and partner-support strategies.
• Provide balanced education about monitoring, pain medication, induction, augmentation, operative vaginal birth, cesarean, VBAC, newborn procedures, and feeding.
• Facilitate values clarification, flexible birth preferences, informed consent/refusal, communication with care teams, and realistic decision-making.
• Address high-risk pregnancy, preterm birth, loss, NICU, unexpected outcomes, birth trauma, postpartum warning signs, and perinatal mental health sensitively.
• Design multiple course formats with objectives, lesson plans, slides, demonstrations, handouts, scenarios, evaluation tools, and current sources.
• Build a sustainable childbirth-education practice with pricing, contracts, partnerships, marketing, documentation, annual evidence review, and continuing development.

Entry & readiness

Perinatal foundations or a faculty-reviewed entry knowledge assessment; orientation, scope agreement and access to teaching practice.

How learning works

Planned delivery combines sequenced instruction, guided independent study, applied assignments, case work and competency assessment, with verified practice where required. Online lessons are self-paced, with access opening on the date above. Live-session arrangements and practice requirements will be confirmed before paid enrollment opens.

Practice & application

20 supervised hours: 4 hours observing classes, 8 hours teaching adult learners, and 8 hours of live educator feedback, rehearsal review and reassessment. At least 2 teaching hours are directly observed. Independent curriculum drafting or revision belongs to study, not practice. A qualified childbirth educator signs the teaching plan, observation record and final rubric.

Completion requirements

Complete all required modules, assignments and practice. Attend at least 90% of live instruction and make up missed learning; all safety and skills sessions are mandatory. Pass the final knowledge assessment at 85% with every critical item correct. Pass the separate performance assessment and portfolio at 17/20 or higher, with at least 3 in each dimension and no critical error. Final evidence must be accepted before an award is issued.

Scope & credential clarity

The childbirth educator provides accurate, balanced, culturally responsive education and facilitates informed decision-making. The educator does not diagnose, interpret tests or monitoring, recommend or discourage a specific medical plan for an individual, prescribe medications/herbs, perform clinical procedures, or guarantee outcomes. Personal birth philosophy must not be presented as the only acceptable approach.

The Daisy Academy award reflects the Academy’s own competency requirements. It does not confer licensure or automatically establish external accreditation, insurance recognition or third-party certification.