Full-Spectrum Doula Training

Our next cohort will be for Fall 2024.
Enrollment will open in late summer.

Our 12-week, online Full-Spectrum Doula Training provides doula education for all stages of a birthing person's life.

We also include education around topics and issues facing our communities and the birth world, such as the Black perinatal health crisis, food insecurity, and queer and trans birth and family building.

This training is available for new doulas as well as experienced doulas.

Note: While this course focuses on the U.S. context, the skills you learn will be applicable outside of the U.S. as well. We have had many students from around the world in each FSD cohort.

📣 We’re super excited to announce that our Spring 2024 cohort will include live Spanish interpretation!

Also, our automated translated captions include Spanish and other languages.

2024 Training Dates

We will offer our FSD Training twice in 2024, in the Spring and Fall.

Enrollment will open for each cohort in the weeks prior, and will be announced on social media and to those on our email list.

Live classes will be held on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 1pm ET. Classes are 75-120 minutes long. Attendance is NOT required. Replays are shared on the learning platform.

Thursday sessions will be divided among four live masterclasses, four co-working sessions and four Q & A's.

All live sessions will have automated captions in English. All replays of live sessions will have corrected captions.

**All prerecorded masterclasses have autogenerated captions in English, some have additional accessibility points (ASL or corrected captions). If you would like more detailed information, email us at info@birthingadvocacy.org.

General Overview (Live)

This training includes:

  • Live classes on 12 consecutive Tuesdays at 1pm EST. There will be 12 live sessions on Thursdays at 1 pm EST, divided among four live masterclasses, four co-working sessions and four Q & A's. All live session are between 75 and 120 minutes long.

  • Attendance is NOT required. Replays are shared on the learning platform.

  • Weekly lessons, materials and assignments. 

  • Quarterly business strategy sessions (and an invitation to each of these future sessions once your training has ended for extended business support).

  • Access to our private online community.

  • One year of access to all materials and recordings (and a free, one-time, 6-month extension, if you need more time!)

  • Optional certification. Certification comes with additional requirements that vary. Our certifications are for life, you will not need to recertify. 

  • A free listing in our directory. You can make your directory listing as soon as you enroll! You do not need a completed certification to join!

  • Scholarship opportunities are available, please sign up for our newsletter and stay connected on social media for more information!

  • Please send an email to info@birthingadvocacy.org about your accessibility needs.

Certification Requirements

If you choose to pursue certification with us, you will be asked to: 

  • Complete online student modules

  • Complete reading list and book reports (books must be obtained by student, we provide PDF downloads when available, and encourage lending/borrowing). Book list:

    • Birthing Liberation, Sabia Wade (Optional Reading)

    • The Labor Progress Handbook (4th Edition), Penny Simkin

    • Killing the Black Body, Dorothy Roberts

    • Revolutionary Mothering, Alexis Pauline Gumbs

    • Empty Cradle Broken Heart, Deborah L Davis

    • Oppression and the Body, Caldwell & Leighton

    • Transformed By Birth, Britta Bushnell

    • Feed the Baby, Victoria Facelli

  • Complete an Infant/Child CPR Certification

  • Visit or tour 2 hospitals, birth centers, or clinics (2 visits total)

  • Assist with a birth, abortion or 12 hours of postpartum care 

  • Attend a chestfeeding/infant feeding support group or class for parents (1 class total)

  • Complete all written assignments thoughtfully

  • Write an assessment of available local resources & gaps

  • Outline your business strategy

  • Participate in our private online community

We are Medicaid-approved in the following states…

Arizona

Michigan

Minnesota

Nevada

Full-Spectrum Doula Training Enrollment Is Now Closed!

LIVE Full-Spectrum Doula Training

Pay-in-Full: $1,100 USD

Payment plans: $1,200 USD
(To cover processing fees)

Bundle: LIVE Full-Spectrum Doula Training + Prerecorded Childbirth Education Training

Pay-in-Full: $1,500 USD

Payment plans: $1,600 USD
(To cover processing fees)

Meet Our Teachers

Sabia is looking to their right, smiling.

Sabia Wade

Core Teacher

Sabia (she/they) - The Black Doula - is a Radical Doula, Educator, Doula Business Coach, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (in training), and Reproductive Justice Advocate. She founded Birthing Advocacy Doula Trainings in 2019 with the goal of bringing necessary education to doulas that are seeking to go beyond the traditional doula role and into advocacy work for the communities that need them.

Iya Mystique

Core Teacher

Iya Mystique (they/she) is a “unicorn”, Blactinx queer femme, and certified radical birth worker currently pursing their path in traditional community birth work, lactation, research, and education, along with being a Pathway 3 Mentee to become a future IBCLC. With a Master of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, Iya Mystique is a trained newborn care specialist and advanced holistic plant medicine practitioner. Iya Mystique specializes in Caribbean-Indigenous practices in their role as an initiated Ifa priestess in perinatal health, reproductive health and justice, “Blactation” (Black lactation), and healing justice for Black LGBTQ+ communities. Iya Mystique's vision is to infuse their love for birth, postpartum, healing, education, and lactation into their future full spectrum practice.

Cheyenne is in a white blazer and black top with stylish glasses, smiling at the camera with head rest on hand.

Cheyenne Scarlett

Masterclass Teacher

Cheyenne Scarlett (she/her), The Info Doula, is a Black, Queer, Neurodivergent mom of 4 and a certified Doula & Childbirth Educator living on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee Peoples now known as Markham, Ontario.

Moss is looking down at the camera, smiling, with a tree canopy in the background.

Moss Froom

Masterclass Teacher

Moss Froom (they/them) is a birth worker and educator living in Baltimore, MD. Moss offers trans and queer-centered support services for people at all stages of their reproductive and family-building journeys and teaches other birth workers and healthcare providers how to provide support that's affirming and celebratory of trans and queer families.

Ash looking at camera, head perched on left hand.

Ash Williams

Masterclass Teacher

Ash Williams (he/him) is a Black trans abortion doula, public intellectual, and abolitionist community organizer from Fayetteville, NC. For the last 5 years, Ash has been vigorously fighting to expand abortion access by funding abortions and training other people to become abortion doulas. Ash is an abortion doula with the Mountain Area Abortion Doula Collective.

Panquetzani leaning back against a tree with both arms raised, hands behind her head.

Panquetzani

Masterclass Teacher

Panquetzani breathes life into ancestral traditions, offering time-tested wellness practices inspired by Mesoamerican medicine + Mexican folk healing. She uses her sacred hands to heal via bodywork, traditional foods, + herbalism. Using inherited Indigenous knowledge from her Valley of Mexico and Northern Mexican lineages, Panquetzani has been serving her community since the year 2000. Since 2008, Panquetzani has dedicated herself to healing la matriz + disseminating Indigenous wellness practices to her people, helping 3,000+ folks feel their wombs. In 2012, Panquetzani founded Indigemama: Ancestral Healing as a direct response to the womb wellness needs of her communities. Panquetzani provides online and in-person programs, healing services, + education worldwide. Today, Panquetzani has ushered over 8,000 BIPOC members through her online school, Indigescuela. 

Andrew Givens

Masterclass Teacher

Andrew Givens (he/him) is a parent, healthcare worker, and future physician currently located in Carrboro, North Carolina. He is a white queer transmasculine person who gave birth to his child, Omega (she/her), in 2020 (after a 70+ hour induction!). Andrew recently completed a post-bac pre-med program (essentially, all of the science classes a former English major needs to apply to medical school) and a master's in healthcare ethics at the University of Louisville. He just applied to medical school and currently works as a nursing assistant on a pediatric surgery, trauma, and burn unit. Andrew trained as a doula in 2018 and as a lactation counselor in 2020. He loves hanging out at the hospital (especially in the middle of the night), meeting new humans (and the people who love and make them!), and making giant stacks of books he might read one day. He is passionate about the messy, challenging, and essential work of confronting the harms we encounter and enact in the healthcare setting and creating expansive and liberatory alternatives.

Molly Dutton-Kenny

Masterclass Teacher

Molly Dutton-Kenny, CPM, RM (she/her) is a midwife and community advocate based outside of Toronto, Ontario on Anishnabek, Haudenosaunee, Mississaugas of the Credit, and Attiwonderonk land. When not working as a full-time midwife, she specializes in community education around full spectrum pregnancy loss and abortion, and midwifery-based management and support of these experiences, centering home and holistic medicine as options for most people.

Student Feedback

  • Not only did I learn so much about aspects of birthwork that I had never even thought of, I learned so much about life in general and I'm so grateful for that. I'm also grateful for the community we built. By starting each class with a grounding, check in and encouraging us to build relationships with each other in a bunch of ways has been so rich and meaningful. I looked forward to every week because it felt like a chance to see my friends.

    Christine Gibson (@queensdoula)

  • I signed up for two courses before coming across BADT and kept feeling like maybe I had chosen wrong, maybe all the times I thought this was a field I was interested in I was sorely mistaken. BADT made me feel like I was exactly where I was supposed to be, it showed me that like-minded folx were out there and that there could be a place in the doula world for me. I'm missing my Tuesday afternoons and feeling pretty darn grateful for the magic that was shared in that space for those 12 weeks.

    Jillian Desirée (@breathinspiredmovement)

Additional questions?