About Hava NaBaby
We guide expectant parents in creating, nurturing, growing and sustaining vibrant and joyful Jewish lives for themselves, their families and their communities.
Prepare for childbirth, build community, and animate your parenting with Jewish wisdom
Hava NaBaby offerings are unique opportunities that weave together practical, spiritual, emotional and relational storylines that help you become the protagonist of your own birth story.
An integration of childbirth education and Jewish wisdom, Hava NaBaby, can be taken in place of or in conjunction with traditional classes offered by a hospital or doctor’s office. We also partner with doulas and midwives to offer complimentary services.
Our classes and workshops are taught in different formats: in-person, hybrid, and online. View our calendar to learn about upcoming classes, courses and workshop dates.
Our Approach Grows from Three Commitments
Content
The courses integrate evidence-based childbirth education with Jewish wisdom and spiritual practice to teach you about pregnancy and prepare you for childbirth.
Conversation
Childbirth is only the beginning of parenthood. Hava NaBaby makes space to think and talk about what matters to you and how you might weave those commitments into the tapestry of your growing family’s life.
Community
The experiences are deliberately designed to create opportunities to connect in meaningful and substantial ways with others traveling the path to (and through!) parenthood at the same time.
Meet Rabbi Miriam, Founder of Hava NaBaby
Rabbi Miriam Cotzin Burg created the first iteration of Hava NaBaby in Chicago in 2006. Soon after giving birth to her first child, she realized that combining “Jewish” and “childbirth education” had the potential to be transformational for many people during this liminal time of life. Since then, she has taught expectant parents in Chicago and Baltimore, where she now lives.
In 2022, she founded Hava NaBaby, a non-profit organization dedicated to meeting people on the path to parenthood with opportunities to learn, connect, and engage with big questions about the people and parents they want to be.
Miriam is a childbirth educator certified by the International Childbirth Education Association and has been a rabbi for more than two decades. Learn more about Hava NaBaby.
TRAINING, CERTIFICATIONS AND MEMBERSHIPS
What Makes Hava NaBaby Different?
Hava NaBaby welcomes those who are Jewishly committed, engaged, questioning, and just curious.
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Integrates evidence based childbirth education with Jewish wisdom and spiritual practice that uplift the possibilities of this moment
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Builds a supportive community with other expectant parents
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Provides a whole-person approach that is more expansive than just "how to get the baby out"
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Creates a supportive, safe and brave space to prepare for childbirth for parents who want a medicated birth, an unmedicated birth and those who don’t know
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Inclusive to Jewish families, intermarried families, multiracial families, queer and gender non-conforming families, single-parent families
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Teaching and training certification for birth professionals and for Jewish educators to support expectant parents on their journey
Jewish Framework
We believe that our tradition is replete with wisdom that enables us to integrate Jewish learning and Jewish living in relevant, purposeful and joyful ways. We believe that this wisdom can make the journey to and through parenthood more meaningful. We believe that community matters, and that creating opportunities to authentically connect with one another is core to the Jewish experience.
Educational Framework
We approach one another and the course material with a curiosity mindset. We understand the classroom to be a place for exploration, not judgment. We aim to make our time together not only a safe space but also a brave space where we can each bring the totality of who we are. We seek, value, and embrace expectant parents from a diversity of Jewish and Jewish-adjacent backgrounds, perspectives and family make-ups.