Neurodiversity for Birth & Post Partum Workers
Welcome, birth and postpartum workers, and health care professionals! You have landed on this page because you are interested in learning more about Neurodiversity and how it impacts pregnant and postnatal families. I would be delighted to facilitate a talk or workshop for you and your colleagues or organization.
About my Workshops & Talks
In my talks & workshops we will delve into the unique challenges and considerations surrounding pregnancy, labour, birth and the maternity system for Neurodivergent people. The workshops & talks aim to develop an understanding of how neurodivergent traits can impact people's experiences of this life stage. The sensory sensitivities, communication styles, and executive functioning differences commonly associated with neurodivergencies such as autism and ADHD will be explored with a view to giving participants the information and skill sets to ensure their own services are ND friendly and so they can tailor their support to meet these specific set of clients needs in the maternity system and beyond.
"Niamh has a gift when it comes to making a potentially heavy topic easy for attendees to digest. Niamh's workshop felt like a
collaboration; she created a safe space for people to enquire in an open manner and for others to share their experiences. She even knows the appropriate, and necessary, times to bring levity throughout the workshop."
Rebecca McAllister - IBCLC
Why take this training with me?
I am a trained educator and Internationally Board Certified Lactation Consultant. I am also a qualified Social Care Worker. After going on the journey of discovery and diagnosis with my son I realised that all of our similarities were also all 'traits' that led to his diagnosis and in 2022 I was officially diagnosed with ADHD. We have been on this journey since 2014 and I have spend many, many 100s of hours learning from official resources and professionals. However, in the last four years my learning has focused on interacting with the communities and learning from autistic and ADHD (and other) adults. The neurodivergent community believe 'nothing about us, without us' and I feel it is imperative that more birth and postpartum workers are a aware of our needs. I know the people that do this work want to do best by their clients but we don't know what we don't know, and sometimes, if we haven't learned from the communities themselves, what we think we know, might be wrong.
