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Childbirth Education Conference - a first for New Zealand

The first Conference that Birth International has presented in New Zealand was held on the weekend of March 8 and 9, 2008. The team of speakers, and their topics were:

Mary Nolan PhD, Professor of Perinatal Education at Worcester University, UK. Her Plenary presentation was “Childbirth Education – inclusive or exclusive?” and she facilitated workshop sessions on “Putting the WOW! factor into classes” and “Managing cultural diversity”.

Penny Simkin, Physical Therapist and well-known international author and speaker. Her Plenary addressed the issue of “When sexual abuse survivors give birth” and her workshops were on the themes of “Pain in labour” and “Working with abuse survivors”.

Andrea Robertson, Director of Birth International, closed with the Plenary session on “New challenges for childbirth educators” and ran workshops on “Beating educator burnout” and “Teaching birth basics: making birth easier”.

Bronny Handfield, independent educator from Melbourne, showed her DVD on “Birth in the Media” that forms part of her PhD thesis, and also facilitated workshop sessions of “Teaching birth basics: drugs and interventions”.

Julie Clarke, independent childbirth educator from Sydney gave workshops on “Parenting 101” and “’I can do this!’ – teaching second stage”.

Lorna Davies, Midwifery Educator and author from Christchurch, gave a session on “Creativity and self expression in prenatal programs”.

Deb Pattrick and Tracy Smith, the midwives who form the Core of Life program in Australia, facilitated sessions on “Working with the young and pregnant.”

Allison Hilbig, Women’s health physiotherapist from Melbourne, gave two sessions on “Linking sexuality and birth”.

Judy Cottrell, Midwifery educator from Auckland, presented her workshop on “Action teaching.”

Gerry Smith, midwife and IBCLC from Auckland, offer a program on “Motivating women to breastfeed.”

Overall impressions of the event:

The overwhelming response from participants was that this was an exciting, stimulating event that reignited enthusiasm for childbirth and parenting education and offered many helpful ideas and teaching tips that would be used in future programs.

The Heritage Hotel was a popular choice, and the facilities and food (with the notable exception of the soup on Saturday!) was praised. One person thought the chairs were too uncomfortable and a number of people commented they would have preferred chairs and tables for lunch.

The awful glitch with the A/V equipment on Saturday evening was remarkably well tolerated, no doubt helped by the glass of wine that was available, but this meant the program ran very late, causing problems for some. Saturday was certainly a long day.

The cost was a factor we could do little about – running quality events with overseas speakers is an expensive exercise. Several participants commented that Kiwis don’t mind “roughing it” to get a cheaper event, however I feel that this perpetuates the perception that childbirth educators are “not worth much”, and I prefer to offer as professional event as I can, within reason.

Plenary sessions

These were all praised as being worthwhile. Mary and Penny were applauded for succinct summaries of major issues and opened up conversations that could be continued later in workshops.

“Mary’s talk reduced me to tears in a very heart-warming way. I really appreciated her sharing her family’s story.”

“Interesting. Loved Bronny’s video.”

“Absolutely great closing speech, Andrea. Thank you.”

Workshop sessions

These were very popular and everyone enjoyed the many varied presentations. Speakers were asked to prepare an interactive session that enabled participants to gain skills and try new ideas. Feedback was extensive – here are some examples:

“The talk gave us some great tips on several topics that are often difficult to take – reinforced and revisited learning types – things we knew – but it is always good to be reminded of.”

“Absolutely fantastic looking at diversity and facilitation rather than teaching to or at.”

“Excellent course facilitation of session. Good ideas”

“Great! We are taking her principles straight back to classes! Fab presentation.”

“Very thought provoking. It gave me a new perspective on class participants and ideas.”

“Great. I got to sit in on one of my (s)heros! Great practical information that will really add substance to my classes.

“A very different and interesting session. Stimulating – great ideas. Loved the suggestions for using music, Pictionary etc - thank you. Loved the way you demonstrated your ideas.”

“Great workshop – very concise – they knew their stuff and kept to the point.”

“Wow! Great stuff – very motivating.”

“Good workshop. Definitely will make me tackle this issue more confidently in my classes.”

The event was a huge success, and as we packed up, we were anticipating a similar experience in Sydney, which was scheduled for the following weekend. We were not disappointed…..

Posted by andrea at April 07, 2008 08:46 AM