Evidence Based Birth®

In this episode, I am joined with Brett Iimura to discuss global childbirth education and birth in Japan. Brett has had a varied career, including being a hansom cab driver in New York City, an ASL interpreter, field producer for Japanese TV, literacy tutor and childbirth educator, and doula. She has facilitated in-person classes as a certified childbirth educator and is the director of the Childbirth Education Center, the CEC, based in Japan. Brett has provided childbirth education classes in the United States for 25 years as well, adding a remote or virtual option nine years ago. More than 2000 birthing people and their support partners from over 80 countries have attended CEC’s classes to date. CEC also runs a program that offers a certification in the art of childbirth education for student midwives. We talk about navigating to find a supportive birthing team in Japan, Japan’s medical approaches to birth, along with childbirth education compared to the United States. We also speak about the differences in