JM Birth Consultants International

Promoting Family-Centered Maternity Care

JM Birth Consultants exists for the purpose of providing professional, relevant, evidenced based, education and consulting resources to health professionals, organizations, and the everyday woman serving expectant parents.

Upcoming JM Birth Consultants Workshops

DONA Birth Doula Workshop
Washington, DC
June 1-2, 2012

This workshop will provide hands on education for providing physical and emotional support to the birthing woman and her family. This is an excellent workshop for educating Labor and Delivery nurses on the value of providing emotional and physical support during the birth process.







ICEA's Labor Support for Nurses Workshop
Dates coming soon

Please contact michele@jmbirthconsultants.com to schedule a workshop near you!

This workshop provides education and training in evidence-based nursing care as documented in the Mother-Friendly Childbirth Initiative.  Instructors will cover strategies that the labor and delivery nurse can use to provide mothers with safe, satisfying, and cost-saving care.







ICEA Postpartum Doula Workshop
Dates coming soon

This workshop will provide hands on education and evidence based, scientific research for providing physical and emotional support to new moms and their families. This is an excellent workshop for educating labor doulas, postpartum nurses, lactation counselors, childbirth educators, maternal child health nurses, public health nurses, and peer counselors who want to increase their knowledge of the postpartum period.

Attending the entire workshop will meet the contact hour requirements for the ICEA Postpartum Doula Certification.








ICEA Professional Childbirth Educator Workshop
Seattle, WA
August, 4-5, 2012

This workshop is designed to offer basic training and to strengthen education skills for the childbirth educators, nurses, prenatal instructors, and others working with the childbearing family.  Attending the entire workshop will meet the contact hour requirements for ICEA Childbirth Educator Certification.
 

 

JM Birth Consultants in the News
Podcast

Mindfulness and Yoga for Labor, Birth, and Parenting

Nursing staff in the labor room are busier than ever.  The requirements to

document the care they provide while offering good medical support often

leaves little time to meet the emotional and physical comfort needs of

laboring families.  Join us to listen in on a discussion with Marilyn

Hildreth and Jeannette Schwartz on how they are changing the face

of labor and delivery care to incorporate mother-friendly practices as

the standard.








Every one of the 10 nurses at Jefferson Healthcare’s Family Birth Center – including nurse director Kirsten Pickard – is being honored on Friday for their “mother-friendly” care.


Jefferson Healthcare is the first – and so far, only – hospital in the country to be given that recognition.

Marilyn Hilderth, chair of the Coalition for Improving Maternity Services, said on Monday that what she learned from interviewing all of those nurses is that they not only respect the wishes of the mother, but work as a team with health-care providers.

“The main theme would be respect for the mother,” said Hilderth of why she was so impressed with the nurses at Jefferson Healthcare’s Family Birth Center. “They protected the mother’s birth wishes.

“The other theme that sat me down was the team approach between health-care providers, the doctors and the nurses,” Hilderth said.

Hilderth presents honorary pins to the nurses in a special ceremony on Friday, Dec. 9 at the hospital.

Pickard said Hilderth was so excited that the entire department had taken the time to meet the requirements that she didn’t want to “just stick the pins in the mail.”

In addition to Pickard, nurses being recognized are Marly Yourish, Kelly Traenkenschuh, Anna Wallin, Anne Beers, Melanee Knudsen, Barbara Heckathron, Tanya Foldager, Katie Johnston, Clare Sherley, Penny Lawrence and per diem nurse Jen Patterson.

“We’re very, very proud and very, very excited about this week,” Pickard said of the honor.

The hospital delivers between 110 and 120 babies a year, and Pickard said she’d love to increase that number to 300 a year because “we could do a baby a day.”

In fact, going through a World Health Organization “baby-friendly” designation is next on Pickard’s to-do list.


“It usually takes four years, but I’m pretty sure we can do it this year. We kind of do it already,” Pickard said. There are four steps to that process, and the hospital already is achieving the second step. There are only 112 hospitals in the U.S. with that designation, she said.

Essays and interviews

Penny Lawrence, a nurse who has been at the Port Townsend hospital for 16 years, 10 of those in the birthing center, said on Dec. 5 that nurses not only had to answer questions, but also write essays about their practices, participate in an hour-long phone interview with Hilderth and obtain letters of recommendation.

“Why we stand out is that we are the only birth center in the country where we all practice with similar goals in mind. We support mother-friendly practices,” Lawrence said.

Hilderth said she was impressed that Jefferson Healthcare nurses not only understood that a woman might want a natural birth, but that “they were able to provide a home-birth-like atmosphere and bring that into a safe hospital setting.”

That said, Hilderth noted that if a woman wants epidural support, nurses respect those wishes as well.

The coalition is an organization of individuals and other national groups that are interested in the well-being of mothers, babies and families, and whose mission is to “promote a wellness model of maternity care that will improve birth outcomes and substantially reduce costs,” its website boasts.

“The designation recognizes hospitals which adhere to those evidence-based care delivery practices shown to provide the best outcomes for mothers and babies during labor and delivery,” the website states.

See motherfriendly.org for details.









Keloland News
BROOKINGS, SD - As a part of the ongoing initiative to improve the birth experience, Brookings Health System recently hosted Marilyn Hildreth, co-founder of JM Birth Consultants, to lead a series of classes and focus groups aimed toward progressive labor, delivery, recovery and postpartum care.

Hildreth, a registered nurse and the chair of the CIMS mother friendly nurse recognition program, lead Brookings Health System’s birth experience focus group on July 12. Area residents received the opportunity to voice their wants and needs for a birthing facility.

“We are using the feedback to actively make changes to our labor, delivery, recovery and postpartum care,” said Chief Nursing Officer Tammy Hillestad. “We want to give our expectant moms and dads the best experience possible with a wide array of options focused on respecting the laboring couple.”

Future birth experience focus group sessions are scheduled for August 4 and October 13, 7:00 p.m. in conference rooms A and B.

In addition, Hildreth taught a doula and labor support workshop on July 15-16 and the art of mother friendly labor support workshop for nurses on July 18-19.

“A doula is a person who provides non-medical support to women and their families during labor, childbirth and postpartum period,” said Hildreth. “The workshop is an excellent way for doulas to learn the value of providing emotional and physical support to mothers during the birth process.”

Local nurses who attended the mother friendly labor support workshop learned about the latest evidence-based practices in maternity care, including new and traditional pain relief techniques and standards for the normal birth process.

Brookings Health System provides full obstetrics services to expectant parents and enables area residents to deliver their baby close to home.

http://www.keloland.com/communities/brookings/localdetail12077.cfm?id=118455









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