Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Your
New Baby
A Step-by-Step Online Program
Length:
6.5 hours
Instructor:
Angela Rennie
The online instruction manual for pregnancy, birth, and early parenting that you have been waiting for. Understand the entire pregnancy and birth process and what it means to be a parent.
Course Description
Learn the skills to confidently navigate the birth experience that you want.
Angela Rennie’s unique pregnancy, childbirth, and newborn educational series will take you on a deep and open learning journey into understanding exactly what you can expect every step of the way through this beautiful time of life.
This online program has been described as a priceless resource. You don’t need to read the plethora of baby books anymore. With Angela’s exquisite guidance, you can relax into the bliss of knowing that you are not missing a thing.
In these incredible classes, Angela takes you step-by-step through each stage of your current or upcoming pregnancy and parenting journey. Each lesson is interwoven with honest interviews from various experts and people who have experienced what you’re going through. You’ll also follow 8 couples going through the pregnancy and birthing process in real-time, and they will honestly show you what is to come.
After this course, you’ll enter the first few weeks with your newborn understanding what it really looks like.
You’ll know the common fears that every pregnant person goes through, you’ll understand all the medical procedures that could happen and how to keep your voice strong within the process. Most importantly, you’ll know how to adapt physically, mentally, spiritually to this next phase in life.
Be a leader of your own journey and join in the shared wisdom of a seasoned midwife and real people who have “been there”!
By the end of the course, you will be able to:
- Confidently understand the entire pregnancy and birth process
- Understand all your medical options
- Clear any common fears around pregnancy, childbirth, and the weeks that follow
- Be an informed birth partner to truly be there every step of the way for the pregnant people in your life
- Know how to bond with your baby and spark an everlasting relationship of love
- Adjust your nutrition and lifestyle to achieve better health for you and your baby
- Explore the spiritual side of what it means to be a parent
Need To Know
Who is this course for?
Parents-to-be · Doulas · Birth support partners · General interest
Course length (start & watch when you want)
6.5 hours of video lessons · A Birth & Labour Documentary
Lesson plan
1. Intuitive Birthing and Beyond
Meet your instructor, Angela Rennie. A former midwife who will take your hand through the entire process – from pregnancy to the first few weeks with your new baby. In this unit, you explore:
- what is missing from modern-day maternity care
- how to prepare for the practical, emotional, and lifestyle aspects of becoming a parent
- what intuition is, how to access it, and how to use it to help guide your experience
- how to be you in a complex birthing culture
- an insider’s peek at a group of women sharing their birth stories
- how to get what you want from this experience
- important urgent concerns in pregnancy
2. The Pregnant Body – Do Pregnancy Choices Affect My Birth?
How does lifestyle affect your baby? A discussion on body, mind, spirit, and loving life. Here Angela discusses:
- how choices and lifestyle affect you and your baby
- your birthplace location and the care provider you choose
- facts about pregnancy that you need to know
- how to best treat the body while it changes during pregnancy
- optimal food and exercise for a healthy pregnancy and baby
- the vibrational food scale and how this can benefit you and baby
3. Pregnancy Care – Tests, Procedures, and Fetal Positioning
What to expect in late pregnancy, with a focus on the importance of fetal positioning. Take a deep dive into:
- the power in your decision-making process – having a choice is power
- working with a care provider
- standard tests and procedures in your pregnancy {including post-date pregnancy)
- what you need to know about cesarean sections
- what to expect in late pregnancy, with a focus on the importance of fetal positioning
- kick counts and what they mean
- what position baby should be in before and during labour
- how can you help encourage baby to the best position
4. Labour and Birth
Birth, birth, and more birth – this is what labour may look like. Education is power! Some topics discussed include:
- what is labour and how to understand what is happening during it
- the important difference between Braxton Hicks vs. true labour
- the female reproductive anatomy
- hormones and labour
- exactly what happens at this stage of pregnancy – know what to expect!
- effacement and dilation of the cervix
- labour timeline, early vs. active, and what to do in each phase
- understanding the umbilical cord
- how to know if the water has broken
- what contractions are and how to time them
- birth intention templates and getting what you want
- right brain vs. left brain in labour
- positions for best labouring and birthing baby
5. Comfort Measures and Chakra Energy
A look at how you and others can best support your labour, plus exploring energy work for ideal birthing flow. You learn about:
- complementary relaxation techniques
- the unpredictably of birth – there are two of you: birther and the birthed
- tools to handle your birth with confidence
- how you and others can best support your labour
- breathwork
- rineal massage
- fetal positioning
- the role of doulas
- how to express your need for your experience
- the serene – the space between contractions
- pain management options
- epidurals
- your chakras and you
- exploring energy work for an ideal birthing flow
6. Interventions and Birth Intentions
Learn about the most common items on the intervention menu and how to create your personal birth intentions. In addition, Angela discusses:
- post-date pregnancy vs. post term
- interventions or natural and the options of each
- medical interventions and what to expect
- the power of support
- cesarean emergency vs. elective
- informed choice vs. informed consent
- making choices and how to create your personal birth intentions
- your birthing guest list
- letting go of expectations of the unknown
7. What Are My Barriers and Beliefs? A Look at Self and Letting Go
Take a detailed, honest look at Self. Clear away unwanted baggage prior to becoming a parent and open your world to love and freedom – the best gift you can give your child – in anticipation of this life-changing transition. Additionally, you’ll explore:
- your need for support, guidance, and community
- the importance of meditation and feeling safe in your chosen birth environment
- what birth setting will be optimal for you and your options
- what is the most important in the relationship with your caregiver
- the importance of flexibility with change and the unknown
8. Baby’s First Few Weeks, Including Breastfeeding
What does the early postpartum journey look like? From newborn procedures and all the basics to babywearing. You also learn:
- what to expect in the first hours of your baby’s life
- what your newborn exam might look like
- about common newborn procedures
- all about jaundice in your infant
- about breastfeeding: how to and how often, and the positions to do so
- what to expect in the first weeks
- all about feeding, sleeping, diapering, and physical contact
- a step-by-step babywearing 101 lesson
9. Mama After Birth
The early postpartum journey from madness to magic – the first minutes to weeks after birth. Learn about:
- the immediate postpartum moments in the delivery room and what to expect
- why no one talks about postpartum
- your support options
- your post-baby body and what you might experience
• recovery in the early weeks - honouring rest and healing postpartum
- the ins and outs of the baby blues
- the difference between postpartum depression and anxiety
- postpartum weight loss and exercise
- sex and birth control after baby
- how to make a post-baby nest
- postpartum diet charts
10. Accepting Acceptance – It’s All About Surrender
You’ve got this! A reflection on staying in the moment. Here you explore:
- accepting acceptance
- weaving together all that you have learned
- the practical and the invisible aspects of this program
- your readiness to let go and allow
- the vibrational experience
- finding yourself
- kindness…and opening to others
11. Bonus Units
- mini baby swaddling video
- a guided walking meditation to prepare your mind
- an animated birth video on the 3 stages of labour
- a stunning Birth Documentary that takes an intimate look at 8 births – from early labour to welcoming newborns into the world (with real birth footage!). Prepare for an emotional journey as you receive honorary access into precious moments in each of the families’ lives.
What do you get with the program?
1
2
3
4
5
6
Over 6 hours of stunning online video lessons to guide you every step of the way at your own pace.
Bonus: over 40 quick and easy reference PDFs that you can print and take on the go.
Bonus: a guided meditation to bring your mind and spirit into a calm space...now...and now...and now.
Bonus: a mini swaddling video so you can wrap your baby in a snuggly little cocoon.
Bonus: an animated video showing all stages of birth—from effacement and dilation to birth of the placenta.
Bonus: a heart-warming, tear-jerking birth documentary—featuring live births!—of the journeys of 8 couples meeting their babies for the first time.
1
Over 6 hours of stunning online video lessons to guide you every step of the way at your own pace.
2
Bonus: over 40 quick and easy reference PDFs that you can print and take on the go.
3
Bonus: a guided meditation to bring your mind and spirit into a calm space...now...and now...and now.
4
Bonus: a mini swaddling video so you can wrap your baby in a snuggly little cocoon.
5
Bonus: an animated video showing all stages of birth—from effacement and dilation to birth of the placenta.
6
Bonus: a heart-warming, tear-jerking birth documentary—featuring live births!—of the journeys of 8 couples meeting their babies for the first time.
Meet your instructor
Angela Rennie, RM, RYT, Spiritual Mentor, Reiki Master
Angela is the founder of It Starts With Birth, an online lifestyle and education community aimed at encompassing the whole person: body, mind, and spirit. Before creating It Starts With Birth, Angela worked for 9 years as a Registered Midwife and primary care provider to over 550 women and their families. While each of these women’s experiences in preparing for labour and the transition to motherhood was unique, Angela came to identify a pattern in the needs that they expressed along their journeys and created this online program in response!
Angela studied in the US and graduated from the Seattle Midwifery School (Bastyr University). She spent her early years studying in both Canada and the Caribbean, before settling once again in Victoria, BC, to practice as a Registered Midwife.
Angela’s passion for supporting people on their journey toward parenthood began many years before midwifery school. In the years prior, Angela studied and taught childbirth education, offered breastfeeding support, and worked as a postpartum and birth doula. Her interests and passion have also led Angela to study homeopathy, holistic nutrition, yoga teacher training, Reiki, and spiritual healing (wherein she received mentorship from spiritual healers including a First Nations Haida Shaman).
Angela is a lover of the outdoors. Being atop her favourite mountain and hiking its trails, and sitting with a hot tea and her dogs in the early morning light, are among her greatest pleasures. Her goal for working with women runs parallel to the desire she has for herself and the women in her own life: to inspire women’s evolution toward the amazing lives they deserve!
What our students are saying…
Bonus - Birth & Labour Documentary
As a bonus to your online lessons, you will receive access to an intimate birth documentary.
Follow along with 8 people and their birth partners as they go through the process of labour, birth, and the moments afterwards. Sit back and grab your tissues. This documentary is raw and extraordinarily beautiful. You will feel as though you are right in the same room as you watch, in detail, what each stage of labour can look like. Captured footage includes the early, middle, and late stages of labour; home births; hospital births; and the actual birth itself. Feel the intense joy alongside those in the film when the new infants arrive and prepare yourself for your own upcoming experience.
Shop Online
Are you a Birthing Professional? Check out our animated birth training video, our documentary style birth film following 8 families through their journey to parenthood, and our complete pregnancy and birth poster series.
We have individual posters as well as three complete series to choose from, including our Labour and Birth Poster Series, Postpartum Care Poster Series, and our Nutrition and Spirituality Poster Series.
