Ask a Childbirth Educator (Nov 2022)
“I loved my antenatal class and feel inspired; how can I join the team of Parents Centre Childbirth Educators?“
How many of you loved your antenatal classes? Can you see yourself in this role? Training to become a childbirth educator is an amazing journey and one that can lead to an incredibly rewarding career.
The Pregnancy, Childbirth and Early Parenting Education Diploma is a distance-learning level 5 NZQA course through Ara Institute of Canterbury.
You will learn about the physiology and the emotional aspects of pregnancy, childbirth and early parenting. There is also a major focus on facilitation and adult teaching skills.
Becoming a contracted Childbirth Educator with Parents Centre opens many other opportunities for growth and development. Within such a large organisation across New Zealand there are opportunities for facilitating other courses, working in the community at grass roots and being involved at a national level.
This is the journey our Parent Education & Operations Manager has taken.
My first experience of Parents Centre was in 1998 when attending antenatal classes, myself – 24 years later I continue to share a special friendship with some of these women and our children are lifelong buddies. I got so much from Parents Centre and it was important to me to ‘give back’, so I joined the local committee for a number of years.
My personal experience of birthing and becoming a parent blew me away. The physiology and philosophy of birthing within a supportive environment was so life-changing, it left me with a passion to become a childbirth educator.
I taught for Parents Centre for 20 years, always feeling very honoured to be involved with a group of expectant parents and be part of that very special and intimate time in their lives.
My career in this field developed, leading to my employment by Ara as a supervisor for trainee childbirth educators, facilitator of the 5-day workshop and marker of childbirth education and postnatal assignments for several years.
In June 2010 I began working at Parents Centre’s National Support Centre. During this time was a unique opportunity to facilitate the delivery of Parents Centres parenting programme within prisons in the Wellington and Manawatu regions. This was a fantastic journey, full of challenges and an unbelievable sense of job satisfaction.
Since 2012 I have been the Parent Education & Operations Manager.
It has always amazed me how this tiny seed of interest in childbirth education all those years ago has grown to become an all-encompassing, career that I love.
For further information on becoming a Childbirth Educator for Parents Centre, please email Liz Pearce.
To read more about the diploma, please go to this link
