A birth assistant plays a vital role in supporting families during one of life’s most profound experiences—childbirth. While the role may vary depending on the specific setting, birth assistants generally provide non-medical support to the mother, baby, and birth team. This involves offering emotional comfort, physical assistance, and practical help throughout labor, delivery, and the immediate postpartum period.

Key Skills: Birth assistants must possess a blend of technical, interpersonal, and practical skills. These include active listening, empathy, effective communication, and a solid understanding of labor dynamics. A birth assistant should be able to recognize the emotional needs of the mother, provide comfort techniques such as massage or positioning, and stay calm and focused in case of emergencies. Additionally, understanding cultural differences and bias awareness is essential to offer respectful, individualized care to diverse families.

Birth assistants have valuable skills to support the midwife and family during the birth experience. Those skills are learned with applied skills, experience, and courses like this one! With the birth assistant understanding what each person's role during the birth will really help the flow of the team. A birth assistant's role is completely different than the midwife's, doula's, and midwife apprentice's responsibility.

PLEASE NOTE - Alaska and California have additional skills that birth assistants can do like vaginal examinations, IV starts, fetal heart monitoring, and other higher medical skills that rest of US birth assistants normally don't offer within the scope of birth assisting.