Lower Cesarean Rates by 50%
with our evidence-based, nurse-driven Peanut Ball Training for Nurse Teams
The peanut ball teaches more than strategic positioning. It becomes the entry point for traumainformed labor support and psychologically safe birth care.
Where Labor Support Skills Come Back to Life
Due to high demand for this popular course, we’ve updated and expanded our Peanut Ball day to bring hands-on, team-based training directly to your unit.
Led by experienced L&D nurses, this fun and interactive workshop helps your team practice essential skills together. Yes, we said “fun,” because that’s how L&D nurses describe this learning day!
The Birth Nurse team builds psychologically safe and playful learning spaces so that curiosity can return to professional development. Nurses practice, question old patterns, and build skills together so new approaches move from the classroom into collaborative patient care.
Pictured: Two board members from Nova Scotia Doula Association: Alyssa of Blossom and Birth Doula and Lactation Services, Jenny Jarrett of Balance Massage and Doula
“Failure to Progress” is the most common reason for unplanned primary cesarean— And one of the most preventable!
As a nurse, there are many ways that you can help birthing people encourage labor progress and beat that c-section clock that is always looming over your shoulder.
Image Credit: Lane B Photography
As nurses, we have so much opportunity to encourage labor to progress and help our patients have smoother, faster births.
The Biohacking for Birth Model teaches strategic, physiology-based ways nurses can help lower cesarean rates and improve patient outcomes and satisfaction with their births. And, it means as a nurse, you’ll feel prepared and confident when you’re assigned to an unmedicated patient.
With these classes, you’ll have a deeper understanding of the nurse’s unique role in labor support at the bedside, plus access to a wide variety of safe and effective positioning and support techniques—helping patients to reduce the length of labor and risk of surgery. You will walk out of class ready to implement these techniques immediately!
Nurses reported a 78% increase in confidence in providing trauma-sensitive perinatal care with the completion of our Peanut Ball Training.
Confidence ratings | Pre: 5.05 Post: 9
Findings were statistically significant, p-value <.001
What does a fun & interactive learning day include?
- This training is focused on nurse wellness, nervous system support, and learning trauma informed care (TIC) for labor.
- Psychologically safe learning environment encourages sustainable change.
- Beginner & advanced peanut ball skills with all 4 sizes
- The 3 Ps of safe sizing
- Contraindications to peanut balls
- Peanut ball as a labor augmentation tool
- First & second stage positioning
- Ethical, trauma-informed, shared-decision conversations with patients about the peanut ball and alternative options to facilitate respectful patient refusal.
- Mandy joins your team inside an L&D room for immersive learning
- OPTIONAL ADD-ON: Train-the-Trainer Workshop. For nurse educators to implement content into in-services and ongoing competencies.
Take away tools you’ll actually use:
To help nurse teams collaborate with patients and colleagues in real-world labor situations.
- A pocket-sized flipbook for quick bedside reference.
- A large poster to spark team conversations and problem-solving.
- Mini peanut badge charm to keep ideas front-of-mind.
- Small posters available as reference & conversation starters that remain bedside
This training is unique, tangible, and leads to real behavioral change in units at a rate that is sustainable!
We leave behind educational tools to encourage interdisciplinary conversation, bedside collaboration, and patient-led care. These tools help teams stay grounded in trauma-informed care principles and physiologic birth strategies, giving nurses a framework to feel more confident and aligned in their support.
Without these tangible tools, nurses often forget the more advanced techniques—like alternative positions or patient-specific interventions—especially during busy or high-stress shifts.
This class will equip you with immediately useful skills, evidence-supported and clinically relevant information and more than that: it’s going to give you actionable ways you can help your patient prevent a cesarean, meet their own labor and birth goals, and support the augmentation of their own labor and birth hormones.
At the end of this hands-on course, participants will be able to choose effective, patient-centered peanut ball positions to offer clients in all stages of labor and feel confident in ethical and thorough informed decision conversations when using peanut ball techniques.
Trauma-Informed Labor Support Skills
At the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:
- Define trauma-informed care in your own words in the context of therapeutic labor support.
- Describe 5 ways the hospital environment can be adjusted to support labor hormones and birth physiology.
- Describe 5 activities or positions that can allow for optimal fetal positioning and promote labor progress.
- Demonstrate 2 ways to apply the Gate Control Theory to facilitate labor progress.
CORPORATE CASE STUDY
Wythe County Community Hospital Case Study
What this study found!
REDUCED CESAREAN RATES
Within 18 months, the hospital achieved a 50% reduction in cesarean rate, bringing the rate down to 18%.
REDUCED PERINATAL MORBIDITY
A quality initiative that improves perinatal patient safety, birthing experiences, and reduces morbidity
CONFIDENCE IN PATIENT EDUCATION
Nurse feedback indicates new skills are quickly integrated into practice and health promotion through patient education and trauma-responsive care
What Nurses Are Saying About The Peanut Ball Training
Meet Your Instructor Mandy Irby
BSN, RNC-OB, C-EFM, LCCE, NSI-L1
Mandy values active, ongoing, and strategic labor support skills for all types of laboring patients – not just unmedicated labor paths. She believes that peanut balls are the gateway tool to strengthening these foundational skills, supporting ongoing labor and birth coping skills education, and learning how to incorporate trauma-informed care as the new nursing standard practice. She’s on a mission to reach all 350,000 perinatal nurses in the US with trauma-informed perinatal care practices, and peanut ball trainings are a powerful catalyst for shifting birth care culture!
Let’s discuss the vision you have for your team.
Mandy Irby is the course provider for this workshop. Provider is approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing, Provider Number 17690, for 6 contact hours.
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Peanut Balls: The Trojan Horse for Trauma-Informed Care
Why Peanut Balls Make for Better Birthing
Snag your FREE 10 Hidden Signs of Trauma in Labor PDF
Learn the 10 subtle signs of what trauma can look like in in the birth space and what you can do