Julie Olson and Michelle Kettleborough, doulas and childbirth educators from Denver, Colorado, are the creators of Plumtree Baby. Together, Julie and Michelle have developed a set of teaching resources that will greatly assist birth professionals who are seeking quality childbirth education materials for their students and clients. Each of the modules have been reviewed by medical professionals and lactation consultants, and Plumtree Baby has also consulted with childbirth educators, doulas and expectant mothers to ensure the information in their materials is accurate, useful and verifiable.

Birth pros are able to customize their classes by selecting one or more of the following Plumtree Baby modules:

• Prenatal Wellness – Achieving a Healthy Pregnancy
• The Birth Process – A summary of Labor and Birth
• Thoughtful Decisions – Planning & Communicating for Birth
• Finding Comfort – Ideas for Managing Your Birth
• Natural Childbirth – Finding Comfort and Support
• Following the Birth – The Postpartum & Newborn Period

The modules are 12-20 pages in length, and are three-hole punched so they can conveniently be placed in a binder. In addition, birth pros can purchase binders, a guide with helpful teaching tips, and a set of laminated Labor Practice Cards for use in class or with clients. There is also a teaching curriculum in the works, which will be of great help to instructors who want more guidance using the Plumtree Baby modules.

I had an opportunity to preview the six modules. What I like most:

• They are exceptionally professional in look and feel.
• Each module has a table of contents and clearly marked sections.
• Excellent use of illustrations and photos.
• Short segments of information along with good use of bullet points.
• Objective, unbiased information, and when appropriate, a listing of benefits, risks and alternatives.
• Fill-in-the-blank sections for parents to make notes throughout the modules.
• Educators can pick and choose which modules to use in their classes.
• The cost for these modules are affordable and can be purchased individually or in bulk.

Overall, I feel these modules are a great starting point for educators to present basic information and initiate discussion with their students on a variety of topics. The information is straightforward and not overwhelming, and it is perfect for classes where students have a variety of goals for their births. Students will appreciate the information offered in these modules, and it would be easy for instructors to round out their classes with their own supplementary materials.

Visit the Plumtree Baby website to see preview pages of each module. You can also order a complete set and preview them to see if they are right for your classes. If you find they are not a good fit, you have 14 days to return them for a full refund. Plumtree Baby has also offered Inspired Birth Pro readers a wonderful opportunity to apply a 15% discount for an entire order. Just enter the coupon code BIRTHPRO15 at checkout! This discount opportunity will expire on December 31, 2011.

Plumtree Baby may be the answer if you are looking for beautiful and well-written materials for your group or private childbirth education classes. It will be an excellent resource as they continue to grow and develop additional products.

These posts may also inspire you:

1. Resource: Natural Baby Pros – For Birth Pros and Parents
2. A Double Dip – Marketing and Easy Income Tip for Birth Pros
3. Resource: Business and Doula Skills Videos on YouTube

Enjoy this video on suggestions for teaching comfort measures:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq4Z43xrMig

I’m looking forward to more great tips from Janice in the near future!

These posts may also inspire you:

1. Resource: Support for Mamas on Bedrest
2. Learn Tax Basics for Small Business Owners Directly From The IRS
3. Resource – Penny Simkin’s Articles and Presentations

What I like most about WiseStamp is that you can include icons that link to your social media accounts. This helps shortens the signature considerably.

Here’s what my signature looks like in Gmail.

Is it worth it to have an email signature? Absolutely. And I even encourage using it with personal email accounts. You never know who will read your signature, end up on your website, and want to connect with you and hire you!

Go get your signature from WiseStamp today!

These posts may also inspire you:

1. 5 Tips for Getting on Top of Your Email
2. Tuesday Time Management Tip: Email Templates for Outlook and Gmail
3. Inexpensive Marketing Tip #2 – Website

Darline Turner, a friend of mine in Austin, has a wonderful resource for expectant women who are on bed rest. A mama herself who experienced high-risk pregnancies, Darline has taken her professional wisdom of health and fitness and created an exercise video especially for women on bed rest. In addition, she has numerous articles, podcasts, and resources on her Mamas on Bedrest & Beyond website. For women seeking connection while they are on bed rest, Darline offers wonderful group coaching via video conferencing as well as individual coaching for mamas needing personal one-on-one support.

Darline is offering a free webinar on March 11th to speak about the basics of exercise while on bed rest. Please share this with any of your clients or colleagues that may benefit from discovering Mamas on Bedrest & Beyond!

These posts may also inspire you:

1. Resource – Hypnobabies Hypnosis CDs for Pregnancy, Birth, Postpartum, and Birth Professionals Too!
2. A Double Dip – Marketing and Easy Income Tip for Birth Pros
3. Resource: Business and Doula Skills Videos on YouTube

As much as I use my Outlook calendar and love my iPhone to track my appointments and important dates, there’s something about using a paper-based planner that just works well for me.

About a year ago, I found a great website called Productive Flourishing that’s run by Charlie Gilkey. He writes great articles about time management and getting organized, but what I really love is that he offers, for FREE, great printable planning calendars. And, he updates them each month. If you subscribe to his newsletter, you’ll be invited to visit his “secret lab”, where you have access to the month’s planners.

He generously makes the following available on his site, and you can follow this link to see some screen shots and get more direction on how to use them:

• Annual Strategic Planner, to do long-term planning and specify objectives for each month of the year.
• Quarterly Objective Planner, where you transfer your monthly objectives for the upcoming quarter and add goals to meet those objectives. There is also a section for each month to record your progress towards meeting those objectives.
• Monthly Action Planner, where you once again write in your objectives, and then for each week add the major tasks to help you meet those objectives.
• Weekly Action Planner, where there is space to add in scheduled appointments and break down the projects to do for the week. You can also specify the days you will work on each of these projects, as well as an area to mark off the number of tasks you completed, so you can track how productive you’ve been.
• Daily Action Planner, where you break down your projects even further by adding the tasks. There is space to add your events for the day, and a schedule to block off time to do your tasks (great for those who have adopted the 3/6/9 Time Management Strategy.

A useful tool that Charlie offers is a Productivity Heatmap, which helps you identify your rhythm of energy throughout a typical day in a visual way. I highly recommend you take time to do this, because it will help you really see the times of day that you are most and least productive. This can go far in helping you schedule activities and help you get more done during the times of day you have the most energy.

In addition, if you maintain a blog, you’ll find a great Blog Post Planner and Blog Post Calendar!

All pages print on 8.5 x 11″ sheets. I print them monthly, and on each page I’ll use a highlighter to mark the week and days of the month. I bought a fancy 3-ring binder and some index dividers, and I store the current month’s sheets in the binder. So easy!

You may feel it takes a lot of time just to plan what you’re going to do from day to day, but I think you will find that in the end, you’ll actually get more done. When you start from a big picture perspective and work your goals into smaller and more manageable tasks, you will feel infinitely more organized, more productive, and hopefully this will eventually translate to more abundance – in time and money!

These posts may also inspire you:

1. New Thoughts on Time Management Based on the Numbers 3, 6, and 9
2. Five Steps Summer Sanity: Your Systems (Part 4)
3. How to Keep Your Business Moving Forward

1. The Effective Labour Contraction by Midwife’s Thinking Blog
2. Circumcision is on Decline by Cosmo Magazine online
3. A Sign on the Door by Jennifer Stover of Labor of Love
4. Call for support to Open a call center for pregnant & breastfeeding women using medicine. Request for a Pepsi grant.
5. Planned home birth and neonatal death: Who do we believe? by Science & Sensibility.
6. Creating Your Birth Circle by Helene Rose
7. Milk Paranoia, by Nancy Morhbacher
8. Review: Pregnancy Companion iPhone App (free this weekend) on the Enjoy Birth Blog
9. Hospital policy of withholding food during childbirth coming under scrutiny, on Cleveland.com
10. NIH study indicates stress may delay women getting pregnant, by NIH News

Come across any interesting links? Include them in the comments below.

These posts may also inspire you:

1. 10 Birth-Related Links Round-Up
2. Resource: Downloadable Breastfeeding Pamphlets
3. Ask Inspired Birth Pro: Is it Worth Doing Email Newsletters? It Depends.

Hale Publishing provides breastfeeding books and materials such as Dr. Thomas Hale’s ever popular Medications and Mothers’ Milk. I just learned that they also have a page on their website with 8 pamphlets in PDF format that can be printed and shared:

• A New Breastfeeding Mother Needs…
• Sore Nipples – Engorgement
• If Your Baby is Not Gaining Weight
• When to Call Your Doctor
• Breastfeeding and Working
• Breastfeeding and Drugs
• Breastfeeding and Traveling
• Becoming a Dad

These are perfect for printing and sharing with students and clients!

These posts may also inspire you:

1. Resource: Childbirth Education Class Materials by Plumtree Baby
2. The Law of Attraction and Birth Work
3. Marketing in Small Ways Every Day

In a recent email conversation with Jen, she urged me to emphasize:

“We are here for both the practitioner/providers and the families – to share what providers have to offer, as experts; to get their information out to the public so that we can support them and their professions and bring education and reason to moms and moms-to-be to connect with them!  What is so difficult in the line of work of most of our professionals (for example, a doula), is that most people have no idea what it is they do, why they would want to connect with them, or that there is even any reason or benefit for them to do so.  Without education (provided through the use of YOUR articles and forum posts), moms and moms-to-be have no reason to connect with you; so we want to provide that education first and the reason to connect, THEN provide the opportunity for them to connect in our directory (Free and upgraded listings)…”

So why wouldn’t you want to be a part of this great organization?!

Opportunities for Childbirth Professionals

There are a few ways that childbirth professionals can join the Natural Baby Pros community:

Basic Free Membership

Natural Baby Pros offers free (yes FREE) listings to childbirth professionals to be listed in their directory. Membership also includes the opportunity for clients to rate your services, the ability to submit articles to be archived on the website, calendar listings for your events, and access to their forums. All members can also have a chance to offer a free giveaway (either a product or service), which is highlighted for half a month on the Natural Baby Pros home page.

Upgraded Membership

For $99/year, you will have an additional, enhanced business listing in the directory at the top of your category, your clients can also add reviews and testimonials about you and your services, the opportunity to be a “Practitioner/Business in the Spotlight”, and much more.

A new feature that began this month for those who are the Practitioner/Business in the Spotlight is the opportunity for parents to connect with them directly in the forum. Parents can get their burning questions on a particular topic answered by following a link through Natural Baby Pros’ monthly newsletter.

There are two expert practitioners featured this month:

• Susie Walton, on parenting dynamics and working through issues before pregnancy
• Bobbi Cecio, on relationships and communication and choosing the right educational path for children

Banner Ads

The third way childbirth professionals can increase their exposure on Natural Baby Pros is to purchase banner ads that appear in various locations throughout the website.

In addition to advertising and membership opportunities, childbirth professionals who live in the San Diego area have several opportunities throughout the year to participate in a variety of networking functions through the Natural Baby Project, a collaborative effort by Jen and Amy Saloner.

If you are looking for a way to increase your online visibility and be seen as an expert in your field, Natural Baby Pros’ professional vibe is a terrific outlet for you to consider!

These posts may also inspire you:

1. Resource: Childbirth Education Class Materials by Plumtree Baby
2. A Double Dip – Marketing and Easy Income Tip for Birth Pros
3. Don’t Make the Same Mistakes in Your Business as… ME!

Childbirth professionals can add another dimension to their practice and to their experiences serving women during pregnancy and postpartum by becoming more familiar with hypnosis and encouraging their clients to consider the use of hypnosis during pregnancy and birth.

In addition to the instructor trainings, a great home study program to consider is the Hypno-Doula Certification Program. It is open to anyone interested in helping women in births and does not require previous doula experience. Many of the Hypnobabies Instructors offer live Hypno-Doula training workshops, which include the training materials, so if you like live workshops, contact your local Hypnobabies Instructor to see if they have an workshop coming up soon.

In addition to doula and instructor trainings, Hypnobabies offers a comprehensive childbirth education and childbirth hypnosis course, both live and as a home study program.

One of the best ways that Hypnobabies contributes to the childbirth community is with their extensive list of high-quality hypnosis cds. These hypnosis tracks can be listened to by any expectant mama, not just Hypnobabies students. Childbirth professionals would benefit greatly by investing in some (or all) of their supplementary cds for their lending libraries. From nausea and fear of needles, to helping baby turn from a posterior or breech position, to helping prevent pre-term labor or encouraging baby to come out, to preparing for a planned cesarean, VBAC or twins birth, there is a cd for quite a lot of situations that expectant mamas face. There are even cds available for the postpartum period!

If you’re interested in learning more about hypnosis for childbirth, you can access an introduction to hypnosis audio track and also a relaxation hypnosis track from the Hypnobabies online store. For Hypnobabies birth stories, there are always a multitude of them being announced on the Hypnobabies Blog. The internet has many birth videos from Hypnobabies moms, some of which can be found on the Hypnobabies YouTube Channel. And if you’re like me and can’t get enough of Hypnobabies, you’ll want to follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

Since beginning my work with expectant moms, I quickly realized that having a baby was more a mental/emotional exercise than a physical one. When I discovered what Hypnobabies was about and learned how hypnosis is the best way to prepare the mind and spirit for childbirth, I knew I had to learn more about it. I’m very passionate about Hypnobabies (can you tell?) and I am always encouraging other birth professionals in my community to look into hypnosis when I find out their clients are faced with various issues and challenges during pregnancy. It seems to be taking hold, since I’m beginning to see a growing stream of referrals.

So, I highly encourage you to look into hypnosis, buy some cds to lend to your clients, and also tell your clients and other birth professionals about the extensive resources that Hypnobabies has to offer women. As a final note, Hypnobabies wants to share the wealth (and as a business coach I just have to mention this opportunity) with birth professionals and moms alike, so they’ve have two affiliate programs -their own and one through Amazon- where members can earn money by promoting Hypnobabies.

These posts may also inspire you:

1. Resource: Natural Baby Pros – For Birth Pros and Parents
2. Resource: Childbirth Education Class Materials by Plumtree Baby
3. Baby Fair Success Tips for Birth Pros

1. Video demo of vacuum extraction using a model.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoTCvW5JinE&feature=related

2. From “The Journey to Home Birth” – Woman who shares her story of VBA2C.

http://vimeo.com/5648654

3. Amazing placenta pictures. There’s even a couple of pictures of an amniotic sac filled with fluid.

http://www.pattiramos.com/Placenta.html

4. An OB-Gyn discusses delayed cord clamping.

http://academicobgyn.com/2009/12/03/delayed-cord-clamping-should-be-standard-practice-in-obstetrics/

5. Trailer for the new film, “Babies”.

http://youtu.be/1vupEpNjCuY

6. More OB/Gyns in Canada will learn to deliver breech babies vaginally.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/c-section-not-best-option-for-breech-birth/article1186104/

7. The Importance of Skin to Skin Contact.

http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/jack_newman2.html#1260589328

8. Breastfeeding Benefits

http://www.breastfeedingbasics.com/html/Benefits.shtml

9. Craniosacral Therapy in the Midwives Model of Care.

http://www.midwiferytoday.com/articles/Cranialsacral.asp

10. Blog Carnival on Science and Sensibility about Labor Support. Science and Sensibility has lots of great articles around Lamaze’s six care practices and research around birth.

http://www.scienceandsensibility.org/?p=839

And two extras that will make you scratch your head.

11. Robot giving birth. Seriously?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2SZj0CnEB8&feature=related

12. Yes. It’s true.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAzmC0uYKAY&NR=1

And finally, here’s a fun babywearing video.

13. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU84rDbdu8Q&feature=player_embedded

If you’ve found (or written) something great you’d like to share, add a comment below. You can also follow me on Facebook or Twitter and share there!

These posts may also inspire you:

1. Article Round-up for Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond
2. Resource: Business and Doula Skills Videos on YouTube
3. Resource for Clients – Spinning Babies