What does doula training actually involve? An honest breakdown of The Original Birth Connection training
When people contact us about training, the first question is usually about eligibility or cost. The second question — almost always — is some version of: but what do you actually do?
It’s a fair question, and not always easy to answer from a course page. So this post is an attempt to be genuinely transparent about what training with The Original Birth Connection looks like from the inside: what you’ll learn, what the structure is, what we expect of you, and what you can expect of us.
We offer two training pathways. This post focuses primarily on our flagship Full Spectrum Doula Training, with a section at the end on our OBC Flex course for those who want an online-only, faster-paced option.
First: what doula training is not
Doula training is not medical or midwifery training. You will not be learning clinical skills, taking blood pressures, or examining anyone. That’s not the role, and it’s important to be clear about it from the start. It is not a substitue for midwifery training either!
What doula training does is build a deep, working understanding of birth — its physiology, its politics, its emotional and psychological terrain — so that you can provide informed, skilled, advocacy-led support to the people you work with. You’re learning to be the person in the room who holds the whole picture: the knowledge to understand what’s happening, the skills to respond usefully, and the awareness to know what isn’t yours to do.
You are also, crucially, learning about yourself. What you carry into this work. What might get in the way. How to be genuinely present for someone else’s experience without making it about you. That reflective layer is woven into everything we do at OBC, and it’s part of what makes this training feel different from a knowledge-transfer course.
The Full Spectrum Doula Training: how it works
The Full Spectrum course runs over six months. It’s designed to be completable alongside work and family commitments — but it does ask for genuine engagement. This isn’t a course you can coast through on a Sunday afternoon. It’s a structured, layered programme that builds your knowledge and confidence progressively.
Here’s what the six months contains:
Self-paced online modules
The foundation of the course is a set of in-depth online modules that you work through at your own pace. These cover the full range of what a doula needs to know and understand — from the physiology of labour and the hormonal architecture of birth, to supporting fertility journeys and pregnancy loss, to the postnatal period, infant feeding, and the transition to parenthood.
The modules are not superficial. They are written and curated for people who want to understand birth deeply, not just describe it. You’ll come away knowing why certain positions support physiological birth, what actually happens hormonally during the transition stage, how trauma shapes a person’s experience of pregnancy and labour, and much more.
The learning is self-directed, which means you have flexibility — but it also means you need to be the kind of person who can work independently and stay motivated without someone chasing you. For most people who come to doula training, that’s not a problem. The passion is usually the easy part.
Three expert masterclasses
Three times across the course you’ll join a live online session with an expert in their field. These aren’t generic guest lectures — they’re bespoke sessions developed specifically for OBC trainees, and they cover territory that many training providers don’t touch at all.
Our masterclass on cultural safety and advocacy is delivered with Illiyin Morrison, and it’s one of the sessions our trainees consistently describe as transformative. It isn’t a box-ticking exercise in ‘diversity’. It’s a substantive, challenging, honest conversation about what it means to work safely and ethically with communities different from your own — and what happens when you don’t.
Our perinatal trauma masterclass is delivered by Hayley Coburn and gives trainees a working understanding of how trauma operates in the birth space: how to recognise it, how to hold it, and how not to inadvertently reinforce it.
These sessions are live, which means you’ll be in conversation — not just listening. Questions are expected and welcomed.
Bi-weekly group discussion sessions
Every two weeks your cohort meets online to discuss what you’re learning. These sessions are structured around the most important and often most complex topics in doula practice: advocacy, human rights, physiological birth, inclusion, business setup, and the ethical dimensions of birth work.
The group sessions matter for reasons beyond the content. Doula work can be isolating, particularly in the early stages. Building genuine relationships with people who are going through the same training, grappling with the same questions, and sharing the same commitment is one of the most valuable things you’ll take from this course. Our cohorts tend to stay connected long after training ends.
The in-person practical skills weekend
Somewhere in the middle or towards the end of the six months, you’ll attend an in-person practical skills weekend. This is currently run in London, Leeds, and Cheltenham, with dates throughout the year. If geography or timing is a consideration for you, speak to your local OBC facilitator about what’s available.
The weekend is exactly what it sounds like: a chance to practise. Positioning. Comfort measures. Breathing support. Inflating a birth pool and optimising a birth space. Bodywork. The physical tools of doula work that you can read about but can’t fully understand until you’ve done them with your hands. It’s also a chance to meet your cohort in person, which most trainees find hugely energising.
For many people, the in-person weekend is the moment the training clicks into place. The knowledge from the online modules starts to make embodied sense.
The mentoring: what makes OBC different
This is the part of our training that we’re most proud of, and the part that most clearly distinguishes us from other UK doula training providers.
When you train with OBC, you receive up to 18 months of 1:1 mentoring, included in your course fee. Six months of mentoring runs alongside your training. Then, when you complete the course and move into your accreditation period — the phase where you’re starting to work with real clients — you have up to 12 further months of 1:1 mentoring support.
Most doula training ends when the course does. Ours doesn’t. We think that’s not when the support is needed most — it’s when it’s needed most.
Your mentor is an experienced, practising doula who knows this work from the inside. They’re not there to tell you what to do. They’re there to help you think, to reflect on what you’re learning, to process the births you attend, to support you when something is hard, and to help you build a practice that works for your life.
18 months is a meaningful amount of time. It means you’re not on your own when you sit with your first client, when you face your first difficult birth, when you’re not sure whether to say something or hold back, or when you’re celebrating that beuatiful phyiolgical birth. That support is included. There are no hidden extras.
What the course actually covers
People often ask us for a module list. We’ve kept things broad here because the curriculum does evolve — we update it regularly to reflect current evidence, emerging practice, and the feedback of our graduates. But here’s an honest picture of the terrain:
The physiology of labour and birth — including what drives physiological birth, how hormones work, and what happens when the process is interrupted. What this process looks like when its not “the norm”
Supporting fertility journeys and navigating pregnancy loss with clients
Antenatal support: what the role looks like in pregnancy, how to build a working relationship with a client before labour begins. How to create birth plans and help your clients navigate the NHS
Birth support: comfort measures, positioning, water, breathing, presence, advocacy in clinical settings
Postnatal care: the fourth trimester, infant feeding support, recognising perinatal mental health difficulties, signposting appropriately
Trauma-informed practice: understanding how trauma shapes the birth experience and how to work with it, not around it
Inclusion and cultural safety: working across race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexuality, disability, and socioeconomic background with integrity
Advocacy and human rights: what informed consent means in practice, how to advocate for a client’s choices without overstepping, birth rights under UK law
Setting up and running your doula business: contracts, insurance, pricing, marketing, finding clients
The course is full-spectrum in a real sense. You are not trained to attend uncomplicated home waterbirths, and simply hold someones hand and nothing else. You are trained to be a skilled, reflective companion across the whole range of birth and postnatal experiences — including caesarean births, NICU stays, planned inductions, freebirth, pregnancy after loss, and more.
What we expect from you
We want to be honest about this, because it matters.
This course requires genuine commitment. The self-paced modules will take real time. We offer flexibility and you’re looking at 2-6 hours work a week. The bi-weekly sessions require your presence and your engagement, not just your attendance. The in-person weekend requires you to travel and participate fully. The mentoring works best when you come to it having actually done the thing — read the module, thought about the question, sat with the discomfort.
We also expect you to engage honestly with the harder parts of the curriculum. The sessions on inclusion, cultural safety, and advocacy aren’t comfortable for everyone, and they’re not meant to be. If you are white, middle-class, or otherwise hold social privilege, this training will ask you to look at that clearly and to understand how it shows up in the birth space. That reflective work isn’t optional. It’s central to what it means to be an ethical doula.
You don’t need previous qualifications. You don’t need to have given birth. You don’t need a background in healthcare. What you need is a genuine commitment to birth work, a willingness to learn, and the capacity to sit with complexity.
Accreditation: what happens when you finish
On completing the course and your recognition process, you receive OBC accreditation — included in your fee, no additional cost. This accreditation process happens during your first year of practice, supported by your mentor, and it’s the mechanism by which you demonstrate that your learning has translated into confident, ethical practice.
At the end of accreditation you’ll be listed on our OBC Doula Directory, which we promote through Google Ads, for life — again, included. You’ll have lifetime access to our graduate community groups, and the option to continue your mentoring relationship with OBC at a discounted rate.
You won’t need to go back and do more training to practise as a doula. The course is built so that qualified OBC doulas are ready to work. Additional training options exist if you want to specialise or deepen particular areas — but they’re opportunities, not requirements.
The OBC Flex course: an online-only alternative
For those who want to train more quickly, or who aren’t able to commit to an in-person element, we offer OBC Flex: an eight-week, fully online birth and postnatal doula training.
OBC Flex at a glance:
Duration: 8 weeks
Format: fully online, self-paced with weekly 1:1 sessions
Content: 7 online modules covering birth and postnatal doula practice
Live sessions: 2 expert masterclasses (cultural safety & advocacy; perinatal trauma)
Support: weekly 1:1 mentoring sessions throughout, plus mentoring to end of your 6 month accreditation period
OBC Flex covers the core birth and postnatal doula curriculum and includes the some of the same expert masterclasses as the Full Spectrum course. It does not include the in-person weekend, bi-weekly discussion sessions or the fertility and loss modules, and it runs over eight weeks rather than six months. You will get a more limited amount of mentoring - 8 sessions during the course, and up to 6 for your accreditation.
It suits people who learn well independently, who want to move quickly, or who genuinely cannot accommodate an in-person element. It’s a serious qualification, and graduates leave ready to practise.
The Full Spectrum course is broader and deeper, and the in-person element and longer timeframe tend to produce a different kind of confidence. If you’re unsure which is right for you, the best thing to do is speak to one of our facilitators — genuinely, they’re there for that conversation.
The investment, honestly explained
The Full Spectrum Doula Training is £2,860 as a single payment, or £290 per month over ten months. OBC Flex is £1,980 or £250 per month over eight months.
We know these aren’t small amounts of money. Here’s what we’d ask you to hold alongside the number:
Up to 18 months of 1:1 mentoring is included. Externally, professional mentoring for new doulas typically costs £50–£100 per session or more.
OBC accreditation is included — no separate fee.
Lifetime directory listing is included — no annual renewal charge.
Access to expert masterclasses is included — these are not bolt-ons.
Lifetime graduate community access is included.
A new career!
We also offer eight partial scholarships per year, specifically for people identifying as LGBTQIA+, Black or minority ethnic, or disabled (including neurodivergent) as we know people from these communities are underrepresented in birth work. The partial scholarship is £1,430, payable over up to nine monthly instalments. There is an application form on the website.
If cost is a barrier, please speak to us before you conclude that training isn’t possible. We’d rather have that conversation than lose someone who would be a brilliant doula.
Want to find out more?
Download our free guide to becoming a doula — it includes honest accounts from practising OBC doulas about what the work and the training are really like. Or head to the Full Spectrum Doula Training page to see course dates and start your application. If you’d prefer to talk it through first, reach out to your local OBC facilitator — Amanda in London and the South, Leanne in the North and Scotland (their whats app details are at the bottom of the webpage on the link).