Anna Rodney shares hospital birth prep tips with Kristin Revere in the latest episode of Ask the Doulas. Anna is the founder of Birth and Baby University. Gold Coast Doulas is an affiliate for the online Birth and Baby University class, Preparing for Your Hospital Birth.
Hello, hello! This is Kristin with Ask the Doulas, and I am so excited to chat with my friend Anna Rodney today. Anna is the founder and CEO of Chicago Family Doulas and the creator of Birth and Baby University. Anna is a committed lifelong learner and has spent her entire adult life in the field of education. After the birth of her first child in 2009, Anna became incredibly committed to learning as much as possible about birth and babies. She first became a labor and postpartum doula and childbirth educator and has continued to grow her knowledge base and accomplishments. Anna is a newborn care specialist, lactation educator, Lamaze instructor, Happiest Baby on the Block parent educator, a former HypnoBirth instructor, and faculty for CAPPA. CAPPA is a doula training organization. Anna trains labor and postpartum doulas and childbirth educators through CAPPA. Her commitment to learning is only matched with her commitment to supporting and educating families and their incredible journey to parenthood.
Welcome, Anna!
Thank you so much for having me! That was such a nice introduction! I appreciate that!
Of course! You are so accomplished. I’ve been a longtime admirer, and it’s been great to reconnect with you again more recently.
Same! I’ve watched you from afar for many years also and all that you do for your community and the doula community. It’s always incredible.
There’s so much work to be done. I feel like it is a passion of mine that just won’t cease. A lot of people burn out, as you know, in our industry. The average doula is only doing this work for three years, and you and I have worked hard to make things more sustainable for doulas and trying to advance the career. So I do appreciate that!
Really exciting and relevant for, again, supporting families and making impact, and our discussion is centered around preparing for your hospital birth.
Absolutely. I’d say a majority of our families are giving birth at the hospital, and I have created so many classes over the years. A few years ago I was like, I think it would be very important to have a class helping families prepare for their hospital birth outside of the hospital so it could still remain that unbiased support and help them create real questions and real opinions, not being told how to have a baby at one specific or particular hospital.
Exactly. I am with you. I feel like, again, the hospital classes are an excellent option, and they are, as you mentioned, focused on specific hospital policies and procedures and are not as customized. They’re made to be as inclusive for all patients, but with your course, once you approached me about being an affiliate for your Birth and Baby University classes, I wasn’t sure how we could partner because at Gold Coast, we have so many classes, including HypnoBirthing, and I teach a Comfort Measures for Labor class. But we don’t have anything specifically to preparing for a hospital birth, and it is so unique. So I’d love for you to fill in our doula clients and listeners on more of your unique focus in this particular class and what would separate this class from other online classes or even in person out of hospital classes, and then of course the hospital classes themselves.
Yeah, absolutely. So I touched on it just a little bit, but thinking about having a hospital birth, it’s very different from having a birth at a birth center or a home birth. And one thing that was always really important to me is that whoever is taking my classes feels like all or almost all of the content of the class applies to them. And that was something that I’ve always held really close to me because I never want somebody to be sitting in a class feeling like this isn’t about me, or how would I use this. I’m having a homebirth; how would I use this? So I really wanted to hone in on our target audience, which honestly, mostly has births at a hospital. So that was really important to me, that everything in the class applies to them. As a doula trainer, I feel like I get this really broad lens because I’m training doulas from all over the country. So I’m training doulas from New York, California, Georgia, everywhere. And some of them are nurses. Some of them have been doulas for a very long time. And I get to learn about all different ways that hospitals operate, what’s allowed and not allowed, and it was really shocking to me to see such a huge difference. And I love bringing that lens into my trainings, and I thought, oh, wow, this is a lens that I can actually bring into a class.
In Chicago, we offer Preparing for your Hospital Birth in Chicago because I want it to be very specific to the area hospitals. But it’s not very different from our just Preparing For Your Hospital Birth class, but learning about what protocols and procedures are possibly available in every hospital and what maybe they can ask for, what are common things. So my take on it is, hey, these things happen all over the place. What is allowed? What can you advocate for at your specific hospital? What sits well with you?
It’s interesting where families come from in terms of what they believe is possible. And often, they believe what people around them tell them is possible. And Kristin, as doulas, a lot of possible if they ask. So that’s a huge platform for this class. Hey, did you know that you can have skin to skin with your baby? You can even have that for one hour. They don’t have to take baby from you and weigh them and measure them. And did you know that your water might be able to be broken for 12 to 24 hours before even heading in? All of these really big, important changing possibilities that I think families don’t know to ask for and they’re not being offered. So it’s really about empowering families to ask questions, to know what’s possible, to know why people make choices that they do, come to terms with what choices they’re comfortable with. A big part of my classes, always, is about empowering families to feel like they have some control and that it’s up to them and they need to work within their comfort levels.
Exactly. And your class is also very partner-involved, which is helpful because partners want to help, but they don’t know what to ask for, and that could be anything from a birthing ball to the heat packs at hospitals to understanding all of their options and even the importance of a birth preference sheet or birth plan and how that can help them work with their birth team, whether or not they have a doula.
Yes, absolutely. Thanks for saying that! Yes, it’s very much partner involved. It doesn’t have to be if there is no partner, but a support person involved, as well. Somebody who understands why choices are being made for the family and by the family and helping to make sure that those happen. I think building investment in the process and the outcome is a huge part of the class, establishing conversations and boundaries. I was a special ed teacher before becoming a doula and diving in here, but one of my huge ideas always has been information is just information unless you make it usable. So I approach every single class I create with that mindset. Here’s the information, but so what? Why do you care? Why do I care about this? Why might you care? Maybe you don’t care about it. But I really want to build that structure around information so that families can dive deeper and connect it to them. That’s so important to me.
Yes. And I find with some of my Gold Coast clients, we have partners who are traveling for work or they could be a military family, and the fact that you have this online component makes it a lot easier. As doulas, we often serve a large territory for our agencies. For example, at Gold Coast, we serve Northern Michigan and Southwest Michigan for postpartum support, but we aren’t teaching classes in person in those areas. We have clients that have needs, and a class like this is so helpful.
Yes, absolutely. I mean, just making it accessible and having families break it down in a way that they can, at home when they’re sitting with their partner, talking about these sorts of things, they could spend an hour talking about why they may choose an unmedicated birth, where in a class – I love in person classes; don’t get me wrong – but time is limited. So they might have to table the conversation and finish it later in a class, where at home, they can choose what’s the most important to them, watch about it, re-watch about it, talk about it for as long as they want. So there’s absolutely perks to having an in-person class and perks to doing an at-home class, for sure.
And you did mention being able to rewatch things. So if you’re taking the class early in pregnancy and it gets closer to your due date and you’ve forgotten some of the material from class that is very important to your goals for your birth, then the fact that you can watch it over, versus an in-person class, like a hospital class, for example, that is one weekend or multiple evenings for a couple hours here and there. That information, other than the worksheets you’re given, is gone. It’s not like you can access the instructor readily unless it’s potentially a doula who’s teaching that you happen to be working with who you have access to at all times.
Absolutely. There’s that, and we do have – like, all of our classes come with a very comprehensive workbook that has questions and activities but also very helpful handouts and information that they can take screenshots of with their phone and pictures of with their phone and save it for the day of or labor or they can just have it out in labor and be like, oh, yeah, we did talk about comfort measures. Here’s the handout for that. Or yeah, I do remember we talked about when to head to the hospital. What was said about that? What did our doctor say about that? Oh, yeah, there’s a page about it. Like, very usable in the moment activities, as well.
Beautiful. And as you mentioned with some of the comfort measures, the early labor tips, if the partner has forgotten and wants to support, then having screenshots or going through the workbook can be very helpful. I know with my first birth, I didn’t know what doulas were and took Lamaze and worked with a nurse midwife, but my husband had a workbook from our Lamaze class, and he was looking up different things to try. And of course, I had doulas the second time around, so he didn’t have to know all of the things. But I think some of the key points that you cover in this class would be great to jot down notes for discussion with a provider at those very brief prenatal visits, unless of course you’re working with a nurse midwife who may have more time than your OB-GYN. But also in the prenatal visit or visits with your doula, going through some of the information that is important to your unique goals and questions you may have, having access to that information and using it with your support team or any friends or family who might be supporting you as well.
Absolutely. I always teach doulas this and guide my doulas on my team in the same capacity, but I say the prenatal visit, if you’re doing one, do that after someone has taken their classes because then they’ll have this great foundation, and you can build from that. Rather than teaching someone about early labor for 45 minutes in a prenatal visit, it would be great for you to say, hey, bring whatever materials you have from your classes that you took. Let’s talk about questions that you have. Write down questions when you’re taking those classes, and I’m happy to answer those and build that into our prenatal visit. It really can make the doula experience so much richer, and I just feel like families get so much more invested when they’ve taken classes, and that makes them more satisfied with all of it, with their experience with the doula, with their doctor, with their midwife, with the hospital, with their birth, with their baby. It all intertwines so beautifully if families feel prepared and supported and cared for and like they had a voice.
Exactly. I agree. Preparation is important, and not every family wants to invest time or has the ability to afford a class. There are certainly other options, but I’ve found that people who want a doula and can’t make that work for their budget – if they’re investing in a class, then they’re getting information a doula may share at a prenatal. They’re able to prepare and feel confident with the support that their partner or other family member or friend is able to give them.
Absolutely. I do think it makes such a difference, having not only the birthing person, but also their partner know all the why’s for all the things so that in the moment, everything feels so much smoother and less intimidating and scary. I agree; not everyone will want a doula; not everyone will be able to afford a doula, but taking well-done classes will make a positive impact.
Exactly. And your class is affordable! It’s $97, and if our listeners happen to be in West Michigan and are Gold Coast clients, then they can register on our Gold Coast clients, but through your Birth and Baby University, you have a full curriculum of different options class-wise. So if you’d like to touch on your other options and how our listeners who are outside of Michigan are able to register for one or multiple classes that you offer?
Yeah, absolutely! Well, anyone listening, whether they’re in California or New York, can absolutely register for your Preparing For Your Hospital Birth class. But if they do hop on our Birth and Baby University, they’ll find that we have quite a few options on there, and we’re actually always working on building in more classes, so there’s more to come, which I’ll talk about what’s being added soon. But currently, we have Preparing For Your Hospital Birth, Bringing Home Baby. Well, let me talk about the birth ones. Preparing For Your Hospital Birth, Intro to Childbirth, Comfort Measures. Then the preparing for baby classes include Bringing Home Baby and then a simplified class called Newborn Care 101. We created this class because we were getting an influx of families who maybe were adopting or having surrogates. All the things from Bringing Home Baby like postpartum recovery weren’t applying to them, and it’s so important to us that people sit in the class and feel like this is all meaningful information to me. So we created a really hands-on Newborn Care 101 class where it talks about feeding your baby and bathing your baby and swaddling and troubleshooting tricky situations with your baby, but it’s very baby-focused.
I love that you have two options.
Yes. You know, I’m really about making sure that it applies to everyone. We want to support all of our families, and that’s been a great addition. Then we have a breastfeeding class and like I said, all of our classes come with these really comprehensive workbooks so that families can remember things, write down their answers, and dive deeper into the material itself and also have lots of really helpful handouts and information that they could bring with them. Or when they’re nursing their baby, they can look through and be like, oh, yeah, this is normal. I remember from the class, but I also have this great book that reminds me, oh, yeah, feeding my baby every two hours is normal.
Then we have a VBAC class that’s getting put on our website very soon, and we’ll have a twin class coming up really soon. We’re just in the final stage of recording those and making them look perfect, and those will get on there. Also, our goal is to have these classes available in multiple languages at some point, but right now, Intro to Childbirth, Preparing For Your Hospital Birth, Bringing Home Baby, and Breastfeeding are also offered in Spanish.
Wonderful!
Yes, it’s unheard of, unfortunately! That was one of the big reasons I wanted to do that is I don’t think they exist anywhere, and something that I love about having prerecorded classes and materials like this is I can share them for free. I do share a lot of our Spanish curriculum and classes with hospitals so that they can offer it for free to their patients who need it. We are sharing a lot with the refugee community, like the Venezuelan refugees, trying to get them access to this information, because as you can imagine, navigating a whole new system in a language that is foreign is really overwhelming.
Definitely. That is so wonderful. And once some of your newer classes are up, we will add those to the Gold Coast website, certainly. We aren’t teaching a VBAC class. We do have an in-person customized multiples class, but for people who want a self-paced option for twins, I am all about having that, as well. We will be making updates when you do, then!
Awesome! And as you can imagine as a project person like I know you are, too, I do have a list of a whole bunch of other classes that I would like to create but haven’t done so yet.
I love it. And over time, with videos, you can always re-record and update things as, say, hospital policies and procedures change. There have been so many changes since I became a doula, whether it’s feeding information, safe sleep, car seat safety. Things are always being updated, especially with technology advancement.
Absolutely. That is definitely an ongoing thing we do. We create videos surrounding all these different topics, as well, and we’ll be like, well, now we have a video for that. We need to embed that. Now we need to embed this. So it does make it easy to update classes. I mean, we do have printed books for our families taking in-person classes, but we update those also often, so it keeps us on our toes, for sure.
Absolutely. Anna, what other tips do you have for our listeners who are preparing for a hospital birth?
Yeah, I think, like you said earlier, I think taking classes from hospitals can absolutely be helpful, so please don’t think I’m saying never take any classes from hospitals. But it depends on the area that you live in. There are some hospitals that offer more comprehensive classes and some hospitals that offer really short lecture-style classes. So just know what’s offered and know that other options exist out there in terms of classes. But I think what is super important about taking a class like Preparing For Your Hospital Birth is knowing that even if your hospital doesn’t offer something, that it might be an option somewhere else. So a really simple example of this is a tub or showers. Sometimes people are delivering in hospitals and they’re like, oh, you know, my hospital doesn’t even have tubs or they don’t have showers. They take this class and they’re like, oh, wow, maybe some hospitals do absolutely have these things. Or we talk about, can you get out of the bed in labor? I know it seems silly to even say something like that, but to be honest, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had families tell me, oh, the hospital said once my water breaks, I’m not allowed to stand up outside of the bed. And it’s like, really? They said that? That’s not true. Like, you should have the option. So I’m hoping that people take this class and feel that they really do have much more control than maybe their friends have told them or that their doctor has mentioned to them.
One big belief that I have is that absolutely different ways to ask questions and some ways you ask a question results in being empowered, and some ways you ask a question results in giving away your power. And we have a section in the class devoted to this, but a really simple example that I like to share in most of my classes is a family asked their doctor, oh, so when my water breaks, should I head straight to the hospital? That answer is probably yes in most circumstances, if you ask that question. If you ask a similar question and say, if my water breaks, I’d like to stay home for as long as possible. Is that 12 hours? 16 hours? 24 hours? I’m comfortable monitoring what that looks like and smells like. I know what to look for. How long can I stay home for? That answer is going to be 12, 16, or 24 hours, most of the time.
Right. It all depends.
Are you asking as a patient, or are you asking like this is my birth and this is what I want? And you will get a very different answer. One thing I often talk with families about, and I hear this often – they’ll say something along the lines of, well, I’ll just do whatever my doctor says to do. And I say, well, that’s great. That’s great that you trust your doctor and you like them. One thing to be aware of is that your doctor may not share all of your options or possibilities. And then I give them that example, and they’re like, I’m going to try it. And they try it and they’re like, you’re right. I asked in this way, and it totally changed their response. It’s true. In most hospitals, you have some wiggle room with provider practices, and they may or may not be open to changing the way they say something to you if you advocate for yourself. I’m really excited to have that as an option for families. If they know the questions to ask and they know how to ask those questions, they will have more possibilities on the table, and that’s so important to me. Even if it’s not the exact birth that they imagined and hoped for as we know birth is unpredictable, they still will have some power in that, and they usually leave feeling more satisfied and respected and cared for. I am always heartbroken when I hear a family say, like, I don’t even know what happened. I don’t know – I don’t know what happened in my birth. I don’t know how it came to this. That’s one of those words or phrases that sits with me for a long time. When a family says that to me, I always feel devastated for them. And so my hope in all our classes is that we can help families feel like they know what happened. They know why it happened. They know how it led to that. They know choices that they made along the way that were choices rather than things they felt like they had to do.
Exactly. Birth happening to you, versus making informed decisions.
Yes. And I absolutely know that birth is unpredictable and not always as we imagine it to be, but I also know that there could be a lot more power given to the family if they know how to go about receiving that power.
Yes. Absolutely. Anything else that we didn’t cover that you’d like to share, Anna?
I would say also that the Preparing For Your Hospital Birth class is not just about decision-making. It’s absolutely teaching about what happens in labor, comfort measures. A lot of the other things that are more focused on are absolutely mentioned and talked about in this class, but obviously, in Comfort Measures, that’s the focus and we talk only about comfort measures for the most part. But in this class, you can’t avoid talking about having birth in a hospital without going over all of these very important details that make for questions and options. But a lot of knowing what to expect in a hospital and knowing how to navigate it that I think a lot of classes don’t have a focus on. That’s a big focus in this class. So absolutely, we’ve gotten great feedback about it from our families. Families take it and they say, oh, wow, I had no idea that I could ask these questions or that I could ask for any of these things.
Right. Knowledge is power. So thank you for bringing these beautiful classes to the world and to Gold Coast clients! I would love to have you share – let’s start with both of your websites and then get into all of your social media channels that you spend time on.
That’s a lot! Like you mentioned earlier, I own Chicago Family Doulas, which is obviously a Chicago and suburbs of Chicago based doula agency. And we have the opportunity to support so many families in that setting. We have over 200 doulas on our team and a really amazing admin team of about 13 people now. We have a big reach. I love the lens that that has given me. But we have that business, and then I also have, like you mentioned, Birth and Baby University.
I’d say the best way to contact me is at hello@chicagofamilydoulas.com. That is a very busy email that we check hundreds of times a day, so we definitely get back to families really quick and get back to doulas very quickly on that platform.
Then I have an Anna Rodney Doula Trainer website as well where I provide lots of resources to doulas and doula agency owners and birth workers and perinatal professionals. That’s another connected business that I have.
Birth and Baby University is where you find your classes if you’re not going to Gold Coast for the hospital class?
Yes, absolutely. So Birth and Baby University is a big class platform dedicated to expecting families with prerecorded self-paced classes on that platform.
And then what are your favorite social media channels? As you mentioned, you’re pretty much everywhere, but where do you spend the most time?
Yeah, it’s pretty well divided up, but we’re on Instagram and Facebook with all three of those companies, so Chicago Family Doulas, Birth and Baby University, and Anna Rodney Doula. And we do have a really fun TikTok channel on Birth and Baby University. That one is one I fought against for years, but – I have! I always say the younger, cuter version of me, my cousin Nina, runs that channel. And I think that’s been going well because she loves doing it, and that was one of the things that I did not love doing.
I am with you on that. I feel like I’m too old. We have a TikTok channel, but I just can’t get into video the way that I can with other forms of content like blogging, podcasts, and so on.
Same. I’m just like – everything I do on TikTok, I’m like, really? What am I supposed to be doing? I want to give longwinded information and people don’t really want to hear that.
No, it’s all these short clips, and I’m a talker, so YouTube is definitely more my strong suit when it comes to video.
Yep. At Birth and Baby University, we have a YouTube channel, also. We kind of are spread out, but we have lots of amazing followers and contributors to our blogs and our social media also. So that’s all been fun.
Well, I appreciate the work you’re doing. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with our listeners and doula clients. I’ll have to have you on again, Anna!
Yeah, I would love to talk about all the things. We can absolutely talk about anything birth and baby and agency owning, all of it.
Yes, let’s do it again! I’ll wait for your next series of classes to come out and we can do a combined podcast on some of your new options!
Awesome! Thank you so much, Kristin! I really appreciate it!
IMPORTANT LINKS
Preparing For Your Hospital Birth
Birth and postpartum support from Gold Coast Doulas
