Women participating in a prenatal yoga or exercise class focusing on comfort and movement during pregnancy.

  • Come dressed for comfort and moving. This class will give you information about how to address the pain that comes at each stage of labor through practice and hands-on coaching.

  • You won’t be in labor while we explore positions, movements, and techniques to manage pain, so why not lean into it and have fun while we try out some of these new things?! Class is designed to offer playful space for you and your partner to become more comfortable with the very real work of giving birth to your baby.

  • Class is centered on exploring coping methods that support unmedicated birth. Regardless of your birth location, these tools will be useful while laboring at home, in a birth center, or planned hospital birth.

Comfort + Movement: Coping in Labor as a Couple is a 2-hour one-session class.  Attendees will leave class with specific comfort measures to use at each phase and stage of labor, exercises they can do after class to continue exploring the methods that work best for them, and new muscle memory for positions that help manage the pain expected in childbirth.  

Location and Dates:

 

Class Fee: $75 per couple

WHO WOULD ENJOY THIS CLASS:

This class would be great for a couple that would like to add a hands-on component to their learning, if their main childbirth education class does not offer in-person instruction.  It is also great for people who have limited time to re-take a childbirth class as an experienced birth-giver.  


WHO SHOULD NOT TAKE THIS CLASS:

You will not enjoy this class if you are expecting deep learning about the birth process and labor.  Two hours is simply not enough time to explore the complexity of birth.  This class is also not for people who have completed ZERO learning apart from this class.  Everyone consumes knowledge differently, but you will be a bit lost when we discuss phases and stages without additional foundational knowledge.


WHAT DO YOU NEED FOR THIS CLASS:

Please come to class prepared to move like you would in labor.  That means wearing clothing you can squat, sit, lie, and wiggle in.  (I think you can do all those things in anything you wear, but heads up, we will be doing these things in a group setting, in a public classroom.)

About Class

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About Your Instructor

A woman with shoulder-length hair sitting on a windowsill, looking out the window with a slight smile, wearing a checked shirt under a sleeveless sweater, and dark pants, in a black and white photograph.

Ariel Swift has been officially working with birthing populations for 14 years. But her connection to this work traces back to July 13, 1998, when she witnessed her first birth at the age of 15. 

Since that time, Ariel has gathered several doula certifications and childbirth education initials, helped open Chicago’s first freestanding birth center, worked to progress legislation benefiting all birthing people in Illinois, and developed leadership teams across the country to further maternity health care with expanded access to midwives.  Through it all, Ariel has kept her focus close to the heart of her work.

Ariel comes from a play-filled homeschooling start in Washington State and has been building a life in Illinois since 2005. She finds purpose by staying connected to her belief that creating spaces where children enter the world with a well-supported family can start a ripple of positive healing that could impact our entire world for the better. Ariel likes to approach problems with common sense or creative solutions, both at home and elsewhere. She greatly appreciates hands-on projects, small people, boundaries, and clean countertops.

Ariel has two midwife-caught children, a gracious husband, and a small herd of cats.