How to birth a baby - Lamaze Jamestown, North Dakota

I can't wait to get back to my class and use some of the things I've learned. Friday at the Lamaze 2016 conference I attended a session "Design your Lamaze classes to maximize learning." It was fabulous! I have so many great ideas to put into practice and I learned a great way to structure my lessons so that my students will not only learn better but retain the information better. There is another session about the "flipped" classroom that I am excited about too. I am having some trouble deciding between certain sessions and I attended one today that I didn't get much out of and probably would have been better off going to a different one. Overall I'm gaining a lot and will need to take some time to process everything when I get home. Lamaze truly is a fabulous organization and I happy I chose this route. Here are some new friends I made including the current president Maria Brooks. She is at the end of her term and a new president will be electe...

Today was a long day at the Lamaze conference, but a good one full of wonderful stuff. I attended a breastfeeding workshop today. It had "professional" in the title, so it was targeted to a level a little beyond mine, but that didn't bother me. I enjoyed being exposed to the information and although there was some jargon and acronyms that I didn't quite follow, I liked the in depth lessons about breastfeeding that I feel I can bring back to my classes. Allison Walsh was the presenter and she did a good job of covering the multitude of information. I really enjoyed one of the last modules where she talked about challenges with breastfeeding premature infants and those who need to be cared for in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit). I feel like my breastfeeding experience was fairly smooth, I mean compared to the plethora of problems I could have had. I now have a broader knowledge to give to my students that will hopefully help them overcome some challenges they ...

My first Lamaze class series is off to a great start. I have two couples in fairly different places in their pregnancies. It is wonderful to get their different perspectives on the stages they are experiencing. These people have agreed to be my guinea pigs so I can test out my material and get my rhythm established for how I will teach future classes. The biggest thing I learned from my first class session was that I planned on packing too much information into that session. Two hours is a lot of time to fill, I know this because I've had trouble filling 15 and 30 minutes for other speaking engagements I've done with my other job. Also, it is a lot of time to fill with just lecture. Luckily teaching childbirth and pregnancy information can be interactive and I've tried to incorporate those kinds of things where ever I can. But, lecture is a bit unavoidable and I'm hoping I can break things up enough to keep everyone's interest. The session tonight is all abo...