Summary

This 10-week course prepares you to serve as a Community Perinatal Doula by training you to support families across the full perinatal journey, pregnancy, birth, and postpartum, with an education-first approach. You will learn to teach in plain language, guide families through values-aligned preparation, and provide strong resource navigation and referrals. You will also be trained to provide foundational, hands-on, non-medical labor support, including comfort measures and coping support, while understanding what is and is not within scope.

Topics:

• The Community Perinatal Doula role: scope, responsibilities, boundaries, and professionalism

• Perinatal community health foundations: barriers to care, culturally responsive support, and resource navigation

• Building rapport and client-centered communication (including trauma-informed and culturally responsive approaches)

• Teaching in plain language: pregnancy, birth preparation, postpartum recovery, early newborn care

• Preparing clients for appointments: questions to ask, priorities to clarify, and respectful communication strategies

• Birth planning support, including values-based planning and family-centered planning for Cesarean birth when needed

• Foundational hands-on labor support: positions, breathing styles, coping cues, partner coaching, counterpressure basics, and comfort measures

• Informed consent education and shared decision-making support

• Postpartum recovery education and planning for rest, healing, and support at home

• Early newborn care basics: soothing, rhythms, and practical early parenting support

• Infant feeding education within non-clinical scope (breastfeeding foundations and paced bottle feeding basics)

• Recognizing warning signs, referral pathways, and escalation steps

• Professional practice essentials: scheduling, documentation, confidentiality, and simple workflow systems

Field Projects (Skill Demonstrations)

• Teach a short childbirth education lesson using plain-language instruction

• Familiarize with a local birth site (or virtual alternative) and reflect on supportive practices for families

• Demonstrate foundational labor support skills: comfort positions and breathing support (with coaching prompts)

• Teach latch basics and paced bottle feeding using a doll or stuffed animal

• Demonstrate newborn soothing basics and early parenting support skills

• Complete documentation practice and a client-ready perinatal support plan

• Create a simple business plan and starter website outline (optional capstone, if you want)

Course Delivery

100% online. Lessons are asynchronous, so you can complete the weekly work on your own schedule. To keep you progressing steadily, there are weekly deadlines for quizzes, assignments, and field projects.

Pre-requisite

• High School Diploma or Equivalent

Summary

This 5-week course equips you to provide continuous, non-medical labor support with confidence, calm, and clear professional boundaries. You will learn how to offer hands-on comfort measures and coping support, practice respectful, client-centered communication (including active listening and navigating the dynamics between the birthing family, medical staff, and support team), and guide families through informed choice conversations and birth planning using simple decision-making tools. 

Along the way, you will build trauma-informed support instincts (including birth debrief awareness and minimizing harm), develop “high-risk” awareness and escalation judgment (such as preeclampsia awareness and when to refer), and learn clean documentation habits that support professionalism and continuity of care.

Topics

• Christian doula toolkit: role clarity, scope, support posture, and a Christ-honoring presence

• Trauma-aware labor support and preventing avoidable harm (birth trauma awareness and supportive care)

• Core labor support skills: comfort measures, positioning, and coping support for labor pain

• Understanding sources of labor pain and practical strategies to reduce pain perception (non-medical)

• Supporting physiologic labor progression (supporting dilation and pushing with comfort-based strategies)

• Coaching the birthing person in real time using a simple, repeatable support framework (your “ABC’s” approach)

• Preeclampsia awareness for doulas: recognizing concerns and escalating appropriately within scope

• Early labor support (including virtual doula support and decision support for timing, rest, and next steps)

• Communicating with care providers and supporting respectful maternal care without overstepping (advocacy within scope)

• Supporting “high-risk” contexts: emotional support, grounding, and referral-minded care during complex labors

• Informed choice conversations using the BRAIN tool during labor (communication under pressure)

• Supporting epidural labors: comfort, positioning, and maintaining supportive presence within facility policies

• Supporting cesarean births: emotional support, family-centered preferences, and postoperative transition support

• Supporting premature delivery: compassionate presence, expectations, and appropriate referral support

• Facilitating family bonding after birth and supporting the immediate postpartum transition (non-medical)

• Client systems and professionalism: binder/workflow, charting/documentation habits, confidentiality boundaries

• Birth Doula field project: skills demonstration (coping skills/positions), birth vlog observations, and charting practice

Course Delivery

100% online. Lessons are asynchronous, so you can complete the weekly work on your own schedule. To keep you progressing steadily, there are weekly deadlines for quizzes, assignments, and field projects.

Pre-requisites

• Community-based Perinatal Support and Childbirth Education

Summary

This 2-week course equips you to support a mother’s recovery and protect rest in the tender weeks after birth through practical, compassionate, non-medical care. You will learn how to provide a recovery-centered postpartum visit, use trauma-informed and client-centered communication for gentle birth debriefing, and recognize when concerns require timely escalation. Training includes postpartum mental health awareness and screening-minded support (including common perinatal mood and anxiety concerns), urgent maternal warning signs, and lactation anticipatory guidance at a basic level, with a clear referral posture when needs exceed scope. You will also learn to support families facing NICU realities with calm presence, resource navigation, and respectful coordination of follow-up care.

Topics

• The postpartum visit: duties, mindset, and recovery-centered support (including mental health screening-minded support)

• Debriefing after birth: trauma-aware care, birth preferences vs. plans, and helping a mother process her story in a healthy way

• Postpartum family planning considerations (values-sensitive education and appropriate referrals)

• Urgent maternal warning signs and when to escalate to the appropriate provider

• Breastfeeding basics for postpartum support: lactation anticipatory guidance, normal early challenges, and teaching hand expression basics with referral clarity

• Supporting NICU families: compassionate care, communication support, and resource navigation

• Postpartum Doula field project: debrief case study and basic feeding support skill check (recognizing a good latch and knowing when to refer)

Course Delivery

100% online. Lessons are asynchronous, so you can complete the weekly work on your own schedule. To keep you progressing steadily, there are weekly deadlines for quizzes, assignments, and field projects.

Pre-requisites

• Community-based Perinatal Support and Childbirth Education

Summary

This 3-week course equips you to provide safe, attentive, non-medical newborn care for extended shifts (including overnight care), with the confidence to work independently in a family’s home. You will learn newborn health and safety fundamentals, responsive soothing and routines, and practical communication skills for documenting care and handing off information to parents. Training also includes lactation anticipatory guidance and support at a basic troubleshooting level, with special emphasis on pumping guidance and breastfeeding-supportive bottle-feeding techniques that protect a family’s feeding goals. Throughout the course, you will practice culturally responsive, client-centered support, understand ethical responsibilities and professionalism in home-based care, and strengthen your referral instincts so you know when to escalate concerns to the appropriate provider.

Topics covered

• Newborn Care Specialist toolkit: role clarity, scope, home professionalism, and working independently

• Newborn science and normal newborn behavior (what is typical in the first weeks)

• Newborn sleep foundations: safe sleep, daytime and nighttime rhythm, and realistic expectations

• Practical newborn care routines: diapering, soothing, bathing basics, and comforting techniques

• Feeding foundations: understanding breastfed and bottle-fed newborn needs without overstepping scope

• Formula basics: safe preparation, storage, and paced feeding support

• Breastfeeding-supportive bottle feeding (paced feeding technique to protect breastfeeding goals)

• Basic lactation support and troubleshooting: common early challenges, what helps, and when to refer

• Pumping guidance for pumping moms: setup support, comfort, schedules, storage basics, and referral cues

• Night nanny shifts: how to structure overnight care, logs, and parent handoffs

• Newborn safety awareness: calming strategies, preventing harm, and recognizing concerns that need escalation

• Maternal recovery awareness in the newborn season and how to support the home environment respectfully

• Ethics, professionalism, confidentiality, and self-care for sustained, excellent care in families’ homes

• Field Project: newborn care skills demonstration and competency check (hands-on care + feeding-support techniques)

Course Delivery

100% online. Lessons are asynchronous, so you can complete the weekly work on your own schedule. To keep you progressing steadily, there are weekly deadlines for quizzes, assignments, and field projects.

Pre-requisites

• Community-based Perinatal Support and Childbirth Education