Welcome and Thank you - video

Welcome to the True Midwifery Birth First Aid for Mother and Baby course!

My intention with this course is to create a balanced yet informative learning space where we can explore deviations from what is normal in birth, differentiate between what is a variation of normal and support where what is happening may be unsafe for either mother and/or baby. All of this I want to underpin with the message that in MOST births, we can trust that the birth physiology is designed for a safe passage for mother and baby, especially if we guard their environment and protect their basic needs. 

My intention is also to ensure that this is a low learning adrenaline space. Learning spaces that focus on birth emergencies (or emergencies in general) often can leave one feeling fearful and anticipatory when attending births and that is not what we want to be carrying into our birth work! Far from it! I hope that you will walk away from this course, deepening your trust and love for birth, whilst feeling prepared for the rare occasion when a mother or baby may need assistance.

THANK YOUS

I am very grateful to you for investing YOUR time and energy into this course. I know that it can take real effort to carve out time in our very full and busy lives to make space for yet another birth related thing! So I don't take it for granted that you are here. Thank you to you, and thank you to those who support you (your family and your work partners) in making this happen.

Thank you to Samara from WellMama (Wales) and Maria from Humanly (France) who have always supported the True Midwifery vision and dream by creating platforms where my work can be more widely spread and broadcast and who helped sponsor the filming of the very professional video content of this course. Thank you!

I am blessed and lucky to have a friend and landlord who is a documentary filmmaker and who happens to have a film studio on the property where we live! Greg Copeland is super passionate about projects that have true meaning and bring change to this world and he is very sensitive to home birth and midwifery - in fact, his youngest son was born in the house I live in now!

I give thanks to the mothers, babies and families, and my teachers along this path. I am deeply grateful for those who have walked this path before me and I am deeply grateful to the families who have offered me their trust in their birth process. They are my greatest teachers.

I give thanks to my children who gave me the gift of motherhood and sparked and continue to feed and support my journey as a woman, mother and birth attendant.

Thank you to my dear dear friend Lana Petersen who has allowed me to drag her along on pretty much all my birth related visions and quests since we met almost 20 years ago! Lana is a highly experience doula and traditional birth attendant - she is super solid when it comes to holding space for birth, strong yet with a softness really you can really lean into. To be honest, I feel like Lana is more experienced and capable than I am when it comes to birth first aid but then she is also super humble. I am extremely honoured that she has agreed to be my co facilitator in this space. So you are very blessed to receive her sweet wisdom.

I want to give thanks to all the previous participants of the Birth First Aid course. I have been teaching elements of this course since 2014 but it was in 2021 when there was a request to make an online offering (what with most of the world being in some sort of lockdown) that this particular offering came together. I have been honoured to hold space and share in online circles comprising of people from around that world, attending the course for different reasons, sharing and learning from one another. This course has flourished and grown because of the participants and will continue to do so. For this I am grateful.

And last, but certainly, not least I want to give a big big thank you to my life partner, Crallan - he weaves laughter and beauty into my life every day. 

OUR SCHEDULE

We will meet weekly on Wednesdays the 4th, 11th ,18th , 25th September and 2nd October 2024 with a final closing session on Wednesday the 15th of January 2025. 

All our live calls will run from 11 am - 2 pm (SAST - South African Standard Time)

You can double check this against YOUR TIME ZONE here

All our sessions will be recorded and uploaded to this platform and made available to you to view in video format, or to listen to in audio format, for the FULL duration of the course so if you are unable to join the live calls, you will be able to 'catch up' later.

What we will cover during the course:

• Helping Babies Breathe and Helping Mothers Survive philosophy
• Creating and maintaining the basic needs of the mother and baby in an emergency situation
• How to create an emergency care plan (without it causing too much adrenaline!) and support transfer to hospital
• Helping babies who are struggling to breathe at birth
• Dealing with more than normal blood loss after birth
• Preventing and dealing with shoulder dystocia
• Cord Prolapse
• Surprise breech
• Herbs and homoeopathy to support the above 
• Storytelling, sharing and learning from one another’s experiences
• Our own recovery (mental, emotional and physical) 

You will receive a downloadable pdf of the Helping Babies Breathe and Helping Mothers Survive booklets and algorithms, as well as other support materials. You will also receive a certificate of participation and completion.

Much love to you and thank you,

Ruth

Ruth Ehrhardt

True Midwifery