Fear of Childbirth Online Course(s) & Continuing Education
Access the latest clinical skills and research for Fear of Childbirth for PREGNANCY, LABOUR & CHILDBIRTH professional training. These Fear of Childbirth online courses provide practice-changing skills and valuable perspectives from leading global experts. This Fear of Childbirth education has been accredited for a variety of CEUs / CERPs and can be accessed on-demand, at your own pace.
Professor Emeritus Jenny Gamble’s has been a midwife since 1983. She and worked clinically for 17 years in a variety of positions and models of care, several Australian states, and overseas. She has a strong international profile in maternal and newborn research with specific expertise in perinatal mental health. She is a well known for her professional leadership with health services, the midwifery profession and collaboration with consumers.
There is growing evidence that fear of childbirth (FOC) is an issue of importance for women’s emotional and psychological well-being. For some women symptoms are severe and disabling. A previous traumatic birth experience, sexual abuse, and traumatic childbirth stories of others and media may contribute to fear of giving birth.
Fear of childbirth has negative implications for women’s experiences of pregnancy and birth including longer labour, increased likelihood of augmentation of labour, emergency caesarean section, and elective caesarean section.
Access to services for women with fear of childbirth appears to be inequitable and various approaches and interventions are used.
Assessment tools are available and readily implemented in practice to identify women fearful of childbirth and the severity of fear feelings, however a trauma informed approach to talking with fearful women is essential to discover the factors related to the fear and the commencement of a therapeutic relationship.
There is some evidence about interventions to help women fearful of childbirth. The webinar will assist midwives and nurses working in maternity know how to respond to fearful women and provide practical information about what to do, what to say and what not to say to support women experiencing fear of childbirth.
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Alexia is a therapeutic coach, the author of Fearless Birthing, and the host of the award-nominated and chart-topping Fear Free Childbirth podcast. What began as a maternity leave side project is now an essential destination for women with a fear of birth with thousands of women now using Alexia’s site every month to lose The Fear. Alexia helps them to prepare for birth through her private sessions, online courses and membership community.
At the heart of Alexia’s work is a unique fear-clearance method, which women around the world are now using to help them prepare for their birth, and that she successfully uses to help women overcome tokophobia. Alexia also provides training to pregnancy and birth professionals who want to use her Fearless Birthing approach so that more women can access this level of fear-clearance support in preparing for pregnancy and birth.
Fear of childbirth is thought to affect up to 50% of women. In some women, this fear is so strong that they choose not to have children. For those who do, their fear will most likely have an impact on their birth choices and their birth experience. Helping a woman to reduce her fear of birth can be transformative for her experience as a new mother as well as for the family. Reducing fear in women can also contribute to reducing the healthcare costs associated with CS delivery and post-natal mental health. In this presentation, Alexia Leachman will explore the nature of fear of birth, and its most extreme relation, tokophobia. She will discuss where fears come from, why birth isn’t always the problem, and how we can help women to overcome them so that they can go on to experience a fear free childbirth.
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Dr Toohill is a research fellow in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Menzies Health Institute Queensland, Griffith University. Her PhD focused on a midwife psycho-education intervention for women with childbirth fear. In a randomised controlled trial she tested the efficacy of midwife counselling in women who screened high for childbirth fear. She found following midwife counselling that women’s confidence for birth had increased and childbirth fear levels decreased. She currently manages a project to translate this evidence to routine practice at the Gold Coast University Hospital. A midwife of more than 25 years, she was co-lead on the Queensland Normal Birth Clinical Guideline introduced in 2012, and is currently investigating enablers and barriers to use of this guideline. She is passionate about support for women to achieve normal birth, set up a publicly funded birth centre in 2006, the home of midwifery group practice on the Gold Coast.
Childbirth fear impacts around 20% of pregnant women. There is no clear definition of childbirth fear and this is possibly due to variation in its causation and how it manifests. There is a strong link between childbirth fear and operative birth, particularly caesarean section. Assisting women to understand the source of their fear and providing them strategies for managing fear assists in preparation for birth and in reducing non-medically indicated caesarean section. Psycho-education for women with childbirth fear is effective. This presentation will explore the reasons for women’s fear, why a midwifery psycho-education approach is important, how midwives are trained to provide psycho-education, how they apply it in their practice, and the benefits for women, midwives and health services.
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