microcredential

Indigenous Birthworker— Labour Micro-credential course

The Indigenous Birthworker—Labour Micro-credential course emphasizes Indigenous birth philosophies and the Birthworker’s role across the birthing journey. You’ll learn about the signs, stages, and complications of labour, emphasizing wholistic support and trauma-informed care. This course includes Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe) language training for effective communication.

Your Career Path

The Indigenous Birthworker—Labour course offers a comprehensive understanding of Indigenous philosophies on labour and birth, emphasizing the Birthworker’s multifaceted role throughout the birthing journey. Participants delve into the stages, signs, movements, and phases of labour, including potential complications and variations. Wholistic support, covering physical, emotional, and mental aspects, is a key focus, alongside providing crucial information. The curriculum also delves into trauma-informed care, reproductive justice, and birth rights. Anishinaabemowin language training is integrated to enhance communication. Indigenous Birthworkers serve as educators, advocates, and support persons, promoting the well-being of new families by drawing on cultural knowledge. Key highlights include understanding labour stages, addressing challenges, exploring pain management, and fostering cultural sensitivity.

Curriculum

You will walk through a variety of units, each with different lesson styles, resources, and places to upload your assignments and certification expectations. This Indigenous Birthworker–Labour course will prepare learners at the community level with the knowledge and skills to provide culturally appropriate education and support to Indigenous persons and families during late-stage pregnancy, labour and birthing.

Unit 1: Labour and Birth
Unit 2: Comfort Measures and Pain Management
Unit 3: Labour Complications
Unit 4: Ojibwe Language for Labour and Birth

We will be discussing the signs, stages, movements, and the phases of labour. We will also touch base on complications and challenging variations in labour. This will provide you with the information to be a confident and competent labour Birthworker. Remember each client and experience will present new opportunities to learn and grow. It is important to be knowledgeable about the birthing process because it is a phenomenal process for survival of parent and baby, and a big part of your support role.

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Program Information

Program Length: 30 hours of online self-paced content
Start Date: Continuous Intake, start anytime^*
Tuition Fees: $400 • Textbooks Fee: $26 approx. (order separately)

*start dates are subject to change

Other Indigenous Birthworker Micro-Credential Courses at Oshki-Wenjack:

Indigenous Birthworker (Doula)—Pregnancy
Indigenous Birthworker (Doula)—Postpartum
Indigenous Lactation Support

Required Texts

The required texts for this course are used by all three Birthworker micro-credential courses (Pregnancy, Labour, and Postpartum). We recommend purchasing both texts prior to beginning your first (Pregnancy) course to give yourself time to familiarize yourself with both texts as you move through your course work, even if we do not engage directly with both of the texts in each of the three courses.

Required text for the Indigenous Birthworker–Labour course is:

Simkin, P., & Rohs, K. (2018). The birth partner: A complete guide to childbirth for dads, partners, doulas, and other labor companions (5th ed.). Harvard Common Press. ISBN 978-1558329102

In this course, you will notice gender neutrality language and inclusive language are often used, but at other times discussion around birth and pregnancy remains gendered. As many of our teachings and readings utilize gendered terms, there are areas we use them as well for ease of reading. Whenever possible, we commit to using gender neutral and inclusive language throughout the Birthworker courses. Using gender inclusive language means using umbrella terms when talking to everyone and the terms specific people identify with when speaking to them individually.

As we move through our course we will devote some time to learning Ojibwe terms, phrases, and questions. The intent of this course is not for you to become a fluent Ojibwe speaker, rather, it is to help you learn useful and relevant phrases and terms to better support future clients. Some units will have a small language section embedded within that unit, while others may not. Additionally, each of our Birthworker courses will have a unit devoted entirely to Ojibwe language components.