Postpartum Navigator Training
Become a certified
Build Your Nest
Postpartum Navigator
A community based approach to maternal health you can bring to your community.
Need health equity pricing*? Please email me.
What if postpartum planning was part of all prenatal care?
What if parents had support beyond 6 weeks?
What if we gave language and value to the work of helping parents navigate these first few months postpartum?
This training gives you tools to fill gaps that parents face in our maternal healthcare systems. Learn ways to:
Offer postpartum planning guidance during pregnancy.
Offer continued support throughout the first three months postpartum.
Connect parents with the resources they need.
Cultivate community.
Postpartum Navigators recognize that maternal health is multifaceted and supported by medical, social, and cultural solutions.
Postpartum navigators act as a resource hub, cultivating community among both parents and professionals.
This work can be a stand-alone practice or it can be layered with other care that you offer, such as doula work, postpartum care, or midwifery.
Or you can use these tools and concepts to bring more postpartum focus to your current practice.
Need health equity pricing*? Please email me.
Postpartum navigators fill a huge gap in our maternal healthcare systems. This training supports you in adapting this work to your community and to your life.
The Training
Each module includes a prerecorded class, slides, homework and will take roughly 2 hours to complete.
We meet up monthly meet-up on zoom to answer questions and build community.
MODULE 1 Why postpartum planning is important
MODULE 2 The anatomy of a postpartum plan: The Milk Retreat
MODULE 3 The anatomy of a postpartum plan: The Postpartum Net
MODULE 4 Practical tools for encouraging postpartum planning
MODULE 5 The role of the Postpartum Navigator
MODULE 6 Tools for Navigators
MODULE 7 Cultivating community among parents and professionals
Bonus MODULE Postpartum in the pandemic
CERTIFICATION PROCESS
The certification process guides you from envisioning your work to working with clients which can take a minimum of 4 months.
20 page navigator's manual
practice client intake forms
practice client feedback forms
certificate of completion and listing in the navigator directory on the Build Your Nest website
Here are 3 different ways to do the training:
1) Super Passive: Listen to the videos, skim the written material, and let it soak in and nourish your current work.
2) Actively Engage: Watch the videos, do the homework, journal, research, and reflect on how to integrate the ideas and tools it into your current care.
3) Get Certified: After fully doing the course, go through the certification process and bring the postpartum navigator work to your community.
What People Are Saying
"I really enjoyed each module as they covered bit by bit a part of the workbook and how to possibly integrate it into the work I am already doing in my community. I think the useful/impactful part for me was the bite sized peicing...even though it took me a year to complete the course...I was able to do it in chunks!""
— Training Participant
"As a Midwife, my job is to help clients navigate the world of pregnancy and birth through the first 6 weeks of life. Taking this course with Kestrel gave me a deeper insight into the intricacies of postpartum beyond our 6 weeks of care and has helped me better understand how to help our clients prepare for the postpartum during pregnancy. Thanks to Kestrel's work our practice has started encouraging our clients to work through the workbook and discuss thoughts, concerns, fears and logistics with us during the prenatal period, creating a smoother and overall easier/more pleasant postpartum experience.”
— Training Participant
Questions Answered
Q. I'm interested in this training, but don't want to get certified or add a new service to my care, how will it benefit me?
A. You will be given tools that you can integrate into your current care, whether you are a birth or postpartum professional.
Q. I am a postpartum doula, how is this work different?
A. The navigator support is not the in-person and practical care that a postpartum doula offers. The navigator support begins during pregnancy and extends through the third month postpartum. Postpartum doula care can fit within the navigator care.
Q. I am a mother of small children and looking to have an offering that works within my day-to-day life as a parent, would navigator work fit into my life?
A. It may! One of the advantages of this model of care is that it can be all through your phone and can be arranged into your life as works best for you. You don't need to be on call, you don't need to have an office space.
Q. Will this training be offered again?
A. Yes, but most likely it will be expanded up on and be at a different price point.
Q. How long can I access the materials?
A. At least a year.
Q. Why would I want to get certified?
A. The certification process is really meant to support you in bringing this work forward into the world. Too often people take courses or trainings and are left wondering how to actually do the work, how to start, how to work past the challenges that come up. The goal of this process is to give you the support you need.
Q. My English isn't fluent, how is the content delivered?
A. All the video content also has the transcripts available so that you can translate.
Q. I'm not a professional but love supporting other moms in my community, can I take the training?
A. Yes! So many of us are community hubs, helping others navigate early parenting. This training can be a way to deepen the community care that you are already doing. All are welcome.
*Health equity pricing is for BIPOC, rural, single parents, LGBTQ, other economies -country etc.
This training affirms the wisdom of traditions and values their role in connecting families with their own cultural lineages. It gives tools for looking to the wisdom of traditions without appropriative practices.
This training centers the birthing parent / mother, recognizing that not all mothers give birth and not all birthing people identify as mothers, while acknowledging that around the world it is primarily women who give so much of themselves and their lives to the care of children.