We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kelly Colvin a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Kelly, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

The mission of Peaceful Birth Choices is to prepare families to give birth through quality education and support. I want families to have access to unbiased, up-to-date, evidence-based information, to help them make informed decisions for their births.

I train birth professionals on how to teach childbirth classes. Good childbirth educators are vital to every community. Childbirth education should be evidence-based and judgment-free, meaning educators should not be telling women how they should give birth. The best teachers provide their students with accurate, up-to-date information so that families can make informed decisions for themselves. This is the backbone of any quality education. Every woman comes from a different background and her life experiences lead her to make decisions based on her unique situation. Ultimately, there is no one way to birth and we need to be supporting women in their desires.

As a childbirth education trainer, I provide my certified instructors with quality education, beautiful teaching materials, educational resources, and support as they serve families in their communities.

Kelly, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a childbirth education trainer, childbirth educator, and doula. I am the mother of 8 and fell in love with birth after the birth of my third child. My first two births were not ideal; an unplanned cesarean and a traumatizing vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC). With my second pregnancy, I wanted a better experience for myself and my baby. I became educated and made informed decisions and had a beautiful, powerful birth experience.

Birth is meant to empower and transform a woman for the better, not make her feel incapable and broken. My goal is to help women have better birth experiences through quality childbirth education and support.

I have been teaching and supporting families since 2012. When I first began teaching childbirth education, I trained in a self-hypnosis childbirth curriculum and taught this course for many years. While there are many benefits to this type of childbirth education, I felt it was lacking in some areas. And for years I dreamed of writing my own curriculum. I wanted it to align with my belief that mothers have an innate wisdom to know what is right for their children, they just need to tap into their instincts. Birth is highly instinctual and the process is so much easier when a woman can go within herself and find inner knowing and peace with her journey.

I have personally found meditation to be helpful for me in the process of tapping into this innate mother wisdom and I wanted to teach others how meditation and mindfulness practice could help them as they prepare for birth and also with parenting their new baby. Because let’s be real–parenting is tough and if I can give families skills during pregnancy that will help them birth their babies AND help them stay calm and present during the hard parts of parenting then that is a valuable class!

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

The biggest milestone in my professional career has been writing a childbirth curriculum.

In 2021, I decided it was time to take the plunge and I began writing my course. The task was daunting and undeniably a labor of love, but as I began to write, it began to flow and it all just felt right. I would wake up in the middle of the night and ideas would just come to me on how to teach certain sections. There were challenges along the way, but overall, it was quite an exhilarating process! And that’s how Mindfully Prepared Birth was born.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

To be honest, I’m still growing my reputation in this market. I get a lot of word-of-mouth referrals from locals, but reaching out to people outside of Southern Utah is what I am currently working on now. I know many people would love to become a childbirth educator and I want to train them.

As an educator myself, I know how important it is to take care of your teachers. I have specifically streamlined this curriculum, making teaching simple and allowing educators to teach the course in a variety of ways to meet the needs of their students and offer affiliate incentives when they share the online Mindfully Prepared Birth course. I have also made continuing education and yearly dues realistic and affordable. I want my instructors to be successful in this field. When they help women to be better prepared for birth and motherhood, the whole community benefits.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.PeacefulBirthChoices.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peacefulbirthchoices/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PeacefulBirthChoices/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@mindfullypreparedbirth
• Childbirth Educator Training: www.peacefulbirthchoices.com/childbirth-educator-training

Image Credits
Image 1: Headshot–Alisha Shaw Photography Image 2,3,5: Kelly Colvin Image 4: Kelly with Mindfully Prepared Birth Instructor Tiffany Scheel