Full Spectrum Doula Training
Enrollment for our Fall 2024 training has closed.
Please sign up for our waitlist if you’re interested in future cohorts!
Our 12-week, online Full Spectrum Doula Training provides doula education for all stages of a birthing person's life.
We also include education around topics and issues facing our communities and the birth world, such as the Black perinatal health crisis, food insecurity, and queer and trans birth and family building.
This training is available for new doulas as well as experienced doulas.
Note: While this course focuses on the U.S. context, the skills you learn will be applicable outside of the U.S. as well. We have had many students from around the world in each FSD cohort.
2024 Training Dates
We will offer our FSD Training twice in 2024, in the Spring and Fall.
Enrollment will open for each cohort in the weeks prior, and will be announced on social media and to those on our email list.
Live classes will be held on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 1pm ET. Classes are 75-120 minutes long. Attendance is NOT required. Replays are shared on the learning platform.
Thursday sessions will be divided among four live masterclasses, four co-working sessions and four Q & A's.
All live sessions will have automated captions in English. All replays of live sessions will have corrected captions.
**All prerecorded masterclasses have autogenerated captions in English, some have additional accessibility points (ASL or corrected captions). If you would like more detailed information, email us at info@birthingadvocacy.org.
General Overview (Live)
This training includes:
Live classes on 12 consecutive Tuesdays at 1pm EST. There will be 12 live sessions on Thursdays at 1 pm EST, divided among four live masterclasses, four co-working sessions and four Q & A's. All live session are between 75 and 120 minutes long.
Attendance is NOT required. Replays are shared on the learning platform.
Weekly lessons, materials and assignments.
Quarterly business strategy sessions (and an invitation to each of these future sessions once your training has ended for extended business support).
Access to our private online community.
One year of access to all materials and recordings (and a free, one-time, 6-month extension, if you need more time!)
Optional certification. Certification comes with additional requirements that vary. Our certifications are for life, you will not need to recertify.
A free listing in our directory. You can make your directory listing as soon as you enroll! You do not need a completed certification to join!
Scholarship opportunities are available, please sign up for our newsletter and stay connected on social media for more information!
Please send an email to info@birthingadvocacy.org about your accessibility needs.
Certification Requirements
If you choose to pursue certification with us, you will be asked to:
Complete online student modules
Complete reading list and book reports (books must be obtained by student, we provide PDF downloads when available, and encourage lending/borrowing). Book list:
Birthing Liberation, Sabia Wade (Optional Reading)
The Labor Progress Handbook (4th Edition), Penny Simkin
Killing the Black Body, Dorothy Roberts
Revolutionary Mothering, Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Empty Cradle Broken Heart, Deborah L Davis
Oppression and the Body, Caldwell & Leighton
Transformed By Birth, Britta Bushnell
Feed the Baby, Victoria Facelli
Complete an Infant/Child CPR Certification
Visit or tour 2 hospitals, birth centers, or clinics (2 visits total)
Assist with a birth, abortion or 12 hours of postpartum care
Attend a chestfeeding/infant feeding support group or class for parents (1 class total)
Complete all written assignments thoughtfully
Write an assessment of available local resources & gaps
Outline your business strategy
Participate in our private online community
We want to help you navigate the upcoming policy changes with the Doula Medicaid process.
We’ve compiled a page with more details, including the states where we’ve been approved.
Full Spectrum Doula Training Enrollment Is Closed!
LIVE Full Spectrum Doula Training
$999
Bundle: LIVE Full Spectrum Doula Training + Prerecorded Full Spectrum Lactation Educator Training
$1,500
Bundle: LIVE Full Spectrum Doula Training + In-Person FSD Practicum (Atlanta, GA)
$1,350
Meet Our Teachers
Sabia Wade
Core Teacher
Sabia (she/they) - The Black Doula - is a Radical Doula, Educator, Doula Business Coach, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (in training), and Reproductive Justice Advocate. She founded Birthing Advocacy Doula Trainings in 2019 with the goal of bringing necessary education to doulas that are seeking to go beyond the traditional doula role and into advocacy work for the communities that need them.
Iya Mystique
Core Teacher
Iya Mystique (they/she) is a “unicorn”, Black queer femme, tech baddie, and full spectrum perinatal educator. With a Master of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and a "retired therapist" with over 10 years of mental health and wellness experience, Iya Mystique is also a certified BADTie full-spectrum doula, lactation educator, childbirth educator, lactation specialist, perinatal-child health community worker, and a Reiki I and II practitioner, along with being a trained newborn care specialist.
As a teacher and the program manager at Birthing Advocacy Doula Trainings (BADT), Iya Mystique works with students and professionals to transform partners and accomplices in the movement to change the current birth environment locally, nationally, and globally.
In addition to work in the perinatal space, Iya Mystique is an initiated Ifa priestess (spiritual midwife) who specializes in Caribbean-Indigenous practices centered around reproductive support, full-spectrum access, advanced holistic plant medicine, "Blactation" (Black lactation), mental health wellness, and healing justice for Black LGBTQ+ communities, along with innovative web and app development as a UX/UI designer and software engineer.
Masterclass Teachers
To be announced soon…
Student Feedback
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Not only did I learn so much about aspects of birthwork that I had never even thought of, I learned so much about life in general and I'm so grateful for that. I'm also grateful for the community we built. By starting each class with a grounding, check in and encouraging us to build relationships with each other in a bunch of ways has been so rich and meaningful. I looked forward to every week because it felt like a chance to see my friends.
Christine Gibson (@queensdoula)
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I signed up for two courses before coming across BADT and kept feeling like maybe I had chosen wrong, maybe all the times I thought this was a field I was interested in I was sorely mistaken. BADT made me feel like I was exactly where I was supposed to be, it showed me that like-minded folx were out there and that there could be a place in the doula world for me. I'm missing my Tuesday afternoons and feeling pretty darn grateful for the magic that was shared in that space for those 12 weeks.
Jillian Desirée (@breathinspiredmovement)