antenatal education

Skills, confidence and care for every family

For generations, knowledge about pregnancy and birth was passed down within families, communities, cultural practices and witnessing birth firsthand. Today, with many of those connections and opportunities lost - and in some cases taken away - antenatal education plays a vital role in ensuring families are informed, supported, and empowered.

Better Births Illawarra’s Active Birth Workshop provides practical, evidence-based guidance on the physiology of birth, navigating the maternity system, and the benefits of active birth practices. Research shows that movement, breath, and positioning during labour can shorten labour, reduce pain, and decrease the need for interventions such as inductions, epidurals, and caesarean sections.

Our workshops are facilitated by experienced midwives and supported by team members with lived experience of both hospital and home births. We create a welcoming, interactive space for mothers, birthing parents, and support people—whether first-time or experienced—to gain knowledge, skills, and confidence while reconnecting with traditions of community care.

Webinars

Better Births Illawarra actively takes part in research through universities, we are connected with practitioners, academics and initiatives started by women and birthing parents. Our responsibilities lie with sharing information with the broader community. Webinars are an accessible way for us to do this.

We currently have no webinars booked in at this time.

peer support and education

BBI holds monthly Community Hangs where all community members are welcome to come and be supported by their peers. This is an expert-free space. Honouring stories and storytelling as a legitimate and scholarly form of education and learning.

We invite a community member with specific skills to share their knowledge, skills and tools to empower families to be well, connected and informed. These people include artists, physiotherapists, counselors, midwives, lactation consultants and more.

We acknowledge that First Nations Peoples are the original storytellers on this land and we pay our respect to the knowledges, technology from the oldest living culture.

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Our work is conducted on what always was and always will be Aboriginal land — the Countries of the Wodi Wodi, Wandi Wandandian, Dharawal, Yuin of the Yuin Nation. Our work is committed to justice for all people including the sovereignty of First Nations people, knowledge systems and practices. In our work, we commit to reverence, healing, respect, responsibility and reciprocity with all beings, the land, sky, seas and waterways and pay our deepest respect to Elders past, present and emerging.