Great Starts™ Classes provide parents with the unbiased information they need to make the choices that are right for their family.
We help you connect to your baby.
We teach you to care for your newborn’s basic needs: how to breastfeed, how to manage newborn sleep challenges, how to diaper and bathe a baby, how to calm crying, and when to call the doctor. We also discuss ways to understand baby’s cues, respond to and interact with baby, and emotionally bond with your child.
We help you connect to your support network.
We discuss the many different ways family and friends can nurture and support parents through the birth process and the early weeks with baby. We honor all types of family structures, and also help you connect with local resources.
We help you connect to your own strengths.
We strive to help you find your inner strengths, and to empower you to find out about your options and advocate for the ones that meet your needs. Great Starts childbirth classes increase expectant mothers’ confidence about giving birth, and increase their partners’ confidence about supporting women during labor and birth.
Our classes increase confidence and knowledge.
Great Starts childbirth classes increase expectant mothers’ and their partners’ confidence, and help expectant parents increase their knowledge of parental roles and responsibilities, child development and meeting baby’s needs, ways to handle challenging situation.
We know you have many sources of information, including; books, shows and websites of varying quality, your care providers, friends and family. Sometimes it’s hard to know what to believe, hard to understand what are common aspects of pregnancy versus incredibly rare complications, and hard to know what options are available in your local area.
Our knowledgeable instructors help you sort through, filter, and fact-check all this information. We provide you with factual research-based information, guide you in understanding what issues are likely to arise for you and how to manage them, and inform you about current local practices.
In our classes we use a variety of interactive teaching techniques and materials to help you better understand the information, practice skills and ask questions as they arise, integrate the skills you learn into your lives, and apply knowledge to your unique situation.
Great Starts classes help expectant parents increase their knowledge of parental roles and responsibilities, child development and meeting baby’s needs, ways to handle challenging situations, and ways to build secure, nurturing relationships. In the first graph below, the lighter colored bars show the growth in knowledge for expectant mothers. The darker colored bars show the growth in knowledge for expectant fathers and other support people.
