Birthready ▶ About
About

Introducing Birthready

Welcome.  My name is Erika, and I am excited you are here.  With 25 years of experience as a doula, educator and counsellor, I care about your personal and professional health and well-being.  Here, you will find opportunities to learn, practice and integrate birth and life skills for conscious, aware, healthy and empowered living across big times of change.  For health practitioners, I collaborate to support whole family health care through designing and facilitating programs, presentations, in-services, resources and skill sharing.

Together we walk through the choices, challenges and celebration you may be experiencing.  People swing with emotions from ecstacy to anxiety, have their health and wellbeing to manage, ‘to do’ lists to prioritise, decisons about work and parental leave to be planned,  family and cultural expectations to deal with and dreams to make come true…and more!  There is a lot going on.  By integrating counselling,  education, mind/body practices, doula care and practical support we build a trusting, helpful and caring partnership.

The rewards are worth your effort.  People find they relate more meaningfully with others, are more curious about what is possible, know how to ask for what they want, and feel more confident and in control, secure and able in life.

I aim to:

  1. Give continuity of care to expectant and new parents through preconception, pregnancy, birth and into early parenting.
  2. Promote informed and empowered decision-making in health and well-being for individuals, expectant parents and health professionals.
  3. Optimising the natural birth process and reducing the need for interventions through counselling, education, coaching and support.
  4. Promote a healthy work/home life with balance.
  5. Nurture, strengthen and enable self-development and healthy partner relationships.
  6. Work to create an equitable pregnancy, parental leave and return to work process for expectant parents and their employers
  7. Facilitate and educate related professional development programs with community organisations, companies, and allied health professionals.
Training (Click to Open / Close)
  • Motherhood – giving birth and raising my 2 sons
  • Birth Attendant/Doula training at Santa Rosa Womens Health and Birth Centre California 1999
  • Rhea Dempsey’s Birthing Wisdom’s Birth Attendants Course 2001
  • Basic Childbirth Education Training Course for Health Professionals 2003 (National Association of Childbirth Educators)
  • Hypnobirthing workshop – 3 days with Denise Love Nov 2004
  • Qualified Life Coach – Cert IV 2006 at Life Coach Institute Australia
  • National coordinator and group facilitator of BaBs – Birthing and Babies Suppot groups 2006, 2007, 2008
  • Accredited N.A.C.E Childbirth Educator 2008
  • Qualified N.L.P practitioner – With James Tsakalos 2009
  • Birthwork Part 1 – Creative ways of making space for the baby – 3 day workshop Nov 2009
  • NLP Master practitioner training with James Tsakalos 2012
  • Birthing with Hypnosis training for doulas – Open to Life (Anna Urbanski) May 2011
  • ‘What about Dads’ NACE workshop June 2011
  • Birthwork Part 2 – Creative ways of making space for the baby – Jenny Blyth and Fiona Hallinan – Nov 2011
  • PANDA Professional development program – Parenthood as a grief and loss experience July 2013
  • VBAC and Breech births with Maggie Banks 2013
  • OP (occiput posterior) and BAC (Birth after caesarean) study day with Lynne Staff 2014
  • Teaching at The academy of hypnotic science (Diploma of Hypnotherapy to aid pregnancy and childbirth)
  • Advanced diploma of group facilitation 2015
  • Cert 4 in hypnotherapy 2015
  • Lamaze certified Childbirth educator 2017
  • Tantra is love – Sexuality 3 day workshop 2018
  • FIPN – Father inclusive practice network (3 monthly professional development training) 2018 – currently
  • Curiouscreatures.biz workshops for personal development / sexuality / communication and consent skills
  • Gender equity in the workplace training 2018 – Womens Health Vic
  • Baby makes 3 facilitator training 2018
  • Orgasmic Birth 1 day workshop – Debra Pascali Bonaro
  • Australian Fatherhood Symposium 2019
  • Newborn Behavioural Observation Training – The Women’s Hospital 2019
  • (Ongoing regular attendance at professional development conferences and workshops)
  • Family Foundations training 2019
  • The Consent Lab facilitator training Nov 2019
  • Degree in Counselling and Psychotherapy, 2020-2023

To find out more information, contact us.

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Skills for birth and life