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Lamaze Classes
Knowledge – Confidence – Empowering Birth
Childbirth is one of the most important journeys in your life. As you get past the initial euphoria of becoming pregnant, you may grapple with countless questions, apprehensions and fears about how to prepare yourself and your partner to handle this new phase of your life. Healthy Mother has been the trusted partner to thousands of couples who wanted the right information so that they could have a safe and healthy birth.
Healthy Mother – The Pioneers in Lamaze Classes in India
From 2008 we have pioneered Lamaze education in India under the umbrella of Lamaze International. The official Healthy Mother Lamaze classes offer evidence based education for couples and their families in pregnancy, labor, childbirth and early parenting. These practices are adapted from World Heath Organization guidelines and empower women and their partners to become knowledgeable and confident that they are doing the right things for the health of mother and baby.
Healthy Mother Lamaze Classes are India’s most well regarded because of their 100% conformance to the globally recognized Lamaze International Philosophy of Safe, Healthy Pregnancy and Natural Birth, whilst specifically contextualised to our Indian social, cultural and medical needs. Classes are held in major cities across India, with more cities and towns being added as we speak. However, with the current Pandemic, our classes have gone completely online, and parents from across the World are benefitting from these classes. Each Lamaze Batch meets for 4 weekends on Saturdays. We also offer an accelerated course for couples who are in advanced stage of pregnancy. To inquire about classes from anywhere in the world, please fill out the form alongside,
What you will learn in Healthy Mother Lamaze Classes?
The Healthy Mother Lamaze classes prepare expectant couples with information and knowledge to navigate through their pregnancy, childbirth and new parenting phases with confidence. Following are some of the highlights of the 4-weekend program:
Week 1:
- Lamaze Six Birth Practices for a safe, healthy natural birth
- A bit about your body and how your baby is growing right now
- Myths and Facts, Dos and Don’ts in Pregnancy
- Sharing different birth experiences and the current medical model of care; Fear of pain in labour and why is not what you think it to be
- Nutrition and Diet in Pregnancy, Optimal Weight Gain
- Exercise and Fitness in Pregnancy
Week 2 & Week 3:
- Why should labour start on its own? Who starts labour: Mom or Baby?
- All about Labour: Opening up for your baby, Pushing Birth, Birth of Placenta
- Why is delayed cord clamping the best for the baby?
- How to manage early labour at home with ease
- How does labour progress, how long will labour last, how to differentiate between false labour and real labour
- What to do when the Bag of Waters releases
- Positions and Comfort measures in labour – Managing Labour pain with confidence
- Partner/Family role in labour and birth
- Calm, Connection, Love, Support, Privacy – Importance of keeping the Hormones Of Labour flowing
- Videos, questions, role play
Week 4:
- Most important things you need to know about Caesarean Birth, Role play
- You still have rights – Having the most informed, and evidence based Caesarean Birth
- Gentle Caesarean – Safer and happier for both you and baby
- Breastfeeding: Why you will always have enough milk for your baby
- Breastfeeding: Informed is Best, First hours, days, weeks. Baby’s needs, growth spurts, patterns of sleep/wake/feed; Cluster feeding; Night feeding.
- Breastfeeding: How to know if your baby is getting enough milk?
- Breastfeeding: Diet and nutrition
- Breastfeeding: Off to a good start, and onwards to exclusive 6 months and upto 2 years of feeding – WHO recommendations
- New born care: What baby needs, regulating temperature, clothing, a bit about diapering, swaddling, massaging, and bathing overview
- Gentle Parenting/ Lamaze Philosophy of Parenting
- Wrap up – Questions, making a Birth Plan, Advocating for Yourself To have an optimal birth outcome, Choices in Labour and Birth
- Labour Day Drills/ Role play
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Frequently Asked Questions
Our birthing classes teaches the Lamaze philosophy of childbirth, but it also incorporates 15 plus years of our experience in teaching classes, along with the reality of attending births for the last decade, and helping women to give birth with confidence with the Midwifery Model of care. Clients explore a variety of pain-coping and labor strategies to identify the ones most instinctive to each person. Classes prepare you for the variety of birth scenarios you may experience such as a natural and unmedicated birth, and helps you understand common interventions, pain medications, complications, and cesarean birth. Clients learn how to know the difference between necessary and unnecessary medical interventions. Additionally, our classes include postpartum classes, including breastfeeding classes and newborn baby training using holistic/natural tips.
Childbirth classes do help and prepare you in several ways, a lot more than books or videos do. There are widespread misconceptions and myths associated with childhood – that delivering a baby is akin to a medical emergency. In all of this, one completely misses the positive aspects of the natural birthing process, and therefore it is important that expecting parents learn of natural birthing and why it is normal & healthy to opt for a natural birthing.
This is likely to make the expectant parents, especially the mother, well-informed, more confident, and therefore more likely to opt for a natural birthing option. The childbirth classes we conduct provide practical and real-life scenarios which a book might miss altogether. You can express yourself freely, speak about your concerns, ask all the questions you have and thereby become surer about the process.
In a classroom setup, there is a community development, with other expectant parents, and you forge relationships based on mutual interests, concerns, and finding comfort in each other’s company – thereby leading to some lifelong friendships. We are also happy to have the grandparents-to-be to take the class alongside the pregnant parents, this makes them an integral part of the process, and thereby making them more confident, while enabling the mother to go through labor and birth with a more complete family support system around her.
The classes are best taken at 25-30 weeks of pregnancy, this will ensure that the information you learn will be fresh in your minds as you head into labor and childbirth – allowing you the full benefit of applying the learnings into real-life practice. Ideally, the childbirth classes would be best if completed by the 36th week of gestation.
There are certain things which only a qualified instructor can demonstrate, and helps you understand while answering your questions right in front of you – a definite step up over reading books. As such, reading a book prior to your classes can give you a little bit of background and thereby improve your understanding when your instructor demonstrates the same. Also, in an instructor-led teaching environment, you also learn to use the tools that will be necessary for you to learn more about labor & childbirth.
Pain of labor is one which is done of the body, by the body, for your body, to bring your baby out! It is an inevitable part of labor and childbirth, but the key is to understand how to manage this pain. Pain management can be done with appropriate positioning, breathing, good support from your loved ones and with help from your labor helpers. The fact that a lot of expectant mothers are unsure of how the pain will manifest that is more frightening than the actual pain itself. It is the fear of the unknown, and that’s where childbirth classes help you understand the pain as well as the methods to manage it. When you are more informed there is a much lesser likelihood of you being anxious and frightened.
Clothes that allow for free, unrestricted, and comfortable movement during the class are ideal.
Just you and the bump, nothing else is needed. You will be given snack/stretch breaks.
Once registered, unless there is a medical emergency, there will be no refunds. If you are unable to make it to the designated class series, we can find you an alternative slot for the subsequent class series, but this is subject to availability. Also, if you are unable to attend one of the classes of the series, you have the option of taking that class in the next series. However, we recommend that you be serious and responsible to attend once enrolled, so that you get the maximum out of the program.
We recommend that you have a partner. However, if you must attend alone, we can become your partner for the series.
Yes, but one must understand that Lamaze is so much more than just breathing methods. Just like the world around us, Lamaze has evolved a great deal from what it was for the previous generations and today encompasses a wide array of measures and relaxation techniques to help an expectant mother during the course of labor.
Prenatal courses in hospitals are from a medical perspective and focused on the logistics of birthing. And while, these are good classes they lack the practical skills necessary for childbirth such as relaxation and comfort measures that are equally important. Also, in some ways these classes could be very large, and thereby impersonal.
Lamaze on the other hand is a very practice, and personal experience that is based on the most recently available research, preparing parents-to-be for everything that they must know for the birth of the baby.
Thus, if you are planning to or are taking a course at a hospital, taking Lamaze in addition to it would be definitely helpful.
Lamaze classes are not against the use of medical intervention or pain-relieving medication. What we do, is help you understand the benefits & risks associated with such intervention and thereby prepare you to make a more informed decision when such a time arrives – in the best interest of yourself and the baby-to-arrive.
Yes! We do. Especially, if your timing needs are different, or you are short on time, and at the end of pregnancy this is a great option. Our office can help you with this.
Our Lamaze instructors are updated with the latest research material and information that is currently available, and we cover the following areas in our sessions
- Anatomy & physiology of pregnancy
- Different stages & phases of labor
- Options for birthing – at home, hospital etc.
- What must you bring to the hospital for delivery?
- Identifying labor and reaching the hospital
- Relaxation techniques for late-pregnancy stages
- Coping with physical changes in the third trimester
- Hormones, labor & postpartum health
- Breathing techniques, and other methods for labor
- Pain & how to handle it
- Communication skills to interact with your healthcare providers
- Procedures & interventions offered by hospitals
- C-section
- Emotional & physical support required for childbirth
- How to push the baby during the delivery
- Postpartum care for mother & baby
- Breastfeeding methods
- Newborn care
Yes, we do touch upon postpartum care and new-born care but they are not covered in detail. We offer individual consultation separately upon request and registration.
Yes, definitely, if a person is going to be part of or helping you during the course of your labor they are welcome to join you in attending the classes.