birth activism abroad

[Kanga]

I am in the midst of my ALACE childbirth education training and have been active in coaching friends and co-workers through their pregnancies and birth preparations. I've even done a couple of informal classes (we had a large number of friends become moms last year). It's really addicting stuff and I'm itching to get involved with my new community. We are in Italy for two years and I'd love to offer natural childbirth classes in English as I've come across many foreigners who are terrified of the system (37% c-section rate) and not knowing what is going on with their health care.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone has had experience teaching childbirth education in another country (different from the one you trained in) and what difficulties you had, obstacles, advice... (Andrea Robertson is my idle)

So far I'm just keeping my activism to informal one on one conversations (I'll talk to just about any pregnant woman who wants to chat), but I definitely sense a need for something more here. I'd love to do a class or offer labor support services.

[Kanga]

[MamaRabbit]

I teach a class for foreigners. The C/S rate at the hospitals here that most expats use are 90%!! I'm so glad I did the CBI training because they have a section on communicating with the doctor which is a biggie for here. I teach the basics but also specific for here.

[Kanga]

yikes

Wow that's a high percentage!

I'll check out the CBI program. Communicating with the doctors is mostly what I'm concerned about. I don't want to arm parents with all kinds of tools for natural birth and have them just get shut down when they enter the hospital. How do you go about knowing what's allowed and what's not, and what's just common practice, but not necessarily mandatory...