Parents often feel more confident (or at least prepared) going into birth for the second+ time. One concern many do have is how to prepare older children for the arrival of their baby!

This class is for big-siblings-to-be and their parents. Developed by a doula and mom of two in collaboration with an early childhood educator, this class aims to teach children what to expect when their new baby sibling comes home, and get them excited to be a big brother or sister! We'll play, learn, and explore together, and also talk about things parents can do to prepare kids for this exciting time!

Join us for this hands-on workshop, where you and your partner will learn massage techniques to help relieve the common aches and pains of pregnancy. During this course we’ll cover the basics of anatomy, you will learn simple and easy to use massage techniques, and we’ll teach you proper body mechanics that will allow you to help your partner. Knowing the land markings of bones and where muscles are is important not only to ensure safety, but to increase body awareness and allow for a more effective massage. Proper mechanics and technique will keep the massaging partner's body comfortable even with daily massage.

Massage has many benefits which include:

• Increase of blood flow
• Decrease stress
• Natural pain management
• Improves sleep
• Promotes relaxation
• Decreases muscle tension
• Helps bond you and partner with physical touch
• Promotes relaxation

Our goals during this course are to feel comfortable and confident with massage for home use, learn nurturing touch techniques, and gain the tools and knowledge to offer relief to your partner. This unique class also offers an opportunity to improve communication with your partner, a valuable skill in labor.

Investment: $100 per birthing person and massage partner. Pre-registration required, minimum registration required for workshop to run.

Join Gold Certified HypnoBirthing Educator, Allison Pancost, for the 5-week HypnoBirthing Education Program. This amazing program teaches you, along with your birth partner, the art and joy of experiencing birth in a more comfortable manner.

You will learn how to call upon your body’s own natural relaxant, and therefore lessen, or eliminate, discomfort and the need for medical intervention.

When you are properly prepared for childbirth and the mind and body are in harmony, nature is free to function in the same well-designed manner that it does with all other mothers in nature.

Through self-hypnosis and special breathing and visualization techniques, HypnoBirthing teaches you to release fear and to trust your body’s ability to birth instinctively.

HypnoBirthing Advantages

-Teaches you deep levels of relaxation to eliminate the fear that causes tension and pain
-Gives your partner or birthing companion an integral role in the birthing
-Teaches you and your birthing partner how to work alongside your birthing team to achieve the birth you desire
-Shortens the first phase of labor by several hours
-Leaves you feeling alert, fresh, and awake with energy during your labor
-Reduces the need for an episiotomy
-Empowers parents with techniques to achieve a gentle, calm birth for themselves and their baby, whatever turn their birthing takes
-Embraces the concept of pre-birth parenting
-Teaches you breathing techniques that allow you to breathe your baby into the world without hard, physical pushing
-Allows you and your partner to approach birth and parenting informed and empowered

Data shows that HypnoBirthing parents have:
-Less Fear approaching birth
-Fewer interventions and surgical births
-Decreased use of oxytocics or AROM
-Shorter 1st and 2nd phase labor
-Fewer pre-term and low-weight babies
-Lessened or eliminated need for analgesia
-Happier and more content mothers & babies
-Babies alert; able to nurse almost immediately
-Few cases of post-partum depression reported
-Infants with higher than average APGAR scores

Investment- $450/couple - includes the in-person course, HypnoBirthing book, additional course material, and affirmation and relaxation tracks.

Prenatal Partner Yoga is the fun practice of exploring many different yoga postures done in physical contact with another person. Students experience a deeper sense of release and stretching through sharing weight and touch with their partners. This style of yoga practice helps you develop a strong feeling of connection with your baby and partner both on and off your mat. No prior yoga experience necessary.

Some of the benefits include:

* An increase in body awareness and ability to breathe through the moment.

* Helps increase confidence in birth partners and their ability to support the birthing mom.

* Partner assists allow for deeper release and organization in yoga poses, allowing for more effective relief from common issues that arise in the pregnant body such as back pain, sciatica, leg cramps, leg swelling, acid reflux, exhaustion, stiff muscles, and/or insomnia.

* Explores touch as a gateway of the focus to move away from the mind (where fear resides) and into embodied presence.

* Releases oxytocin, which assists in shifting out of fight/flight mode and into the parasympathetic mode, thus increasing feelings of safety, relaxation, pleasure, and connection.

* Brings awareness to multiple areas of the body at once, helping to diffuse mental tension and refresh the nervous system.

* Allows for increased attention, insight, compassion, and gentle encouragement from the helping partner, which often allows the person performing the asana to feel safe to go deeper, gain new understanding on their alignment, or be able to experience subtle but key actions in the pose.

* Creates a fun, expressive experience of unity and trust between partners, and creates a nurturing time and space to connect with your new baby.

Come learn techniques for breath awareness, massage, and partner poses, which can help strengthen and relax your body and soothe your mind during the process. This prenatal partner yoga class is for those pregnant and their partner/husband/friend during pregnancy. *All participants must be registered separately.

Practicing yoga poses and breathing can greatly improve your physical, emotional and spiritual- being. When practiced with a loving partner you can both grow together creating deeper mutual care, trust and family bonding. This will help both of you with your pregnancy, the labor process and parenthood. We will do poses individually and as couples. This class will be taught at a level that will be comfortable for all participants.