It is surprising to many people who have been through my Confident Birthing Class to learn that I am a Lamaze Certified Childbirth Educator. Having taught childbirth classes for so many years prior to becoming certified by Lamaze International, I, too, associated the name, Lamaze, with hospital-based classes teaching an outdated technique. I was very surprised, in 2005, when my class was part of the ethnographic study commissioned by Lamaze, to learn just how wrong I was about that. Once associated with "patterned breathing", Lamaze is no longer a "technique" and breathing is no longer the hallmark of the organization.
Upon discovering the heart of the Lamaze Philosophy through their Position Paper, I found that it was so completely congruent with my...
