Claire Eccleston
Claire is a mother of three beautiful children, midwife, pregnancy yoga teacher, Biodynamic craniosacral practitioner, and midwifery educator. She is passionate about providing loving support for birthing families that acknowledges all realms of the birthing journey. Claire promotes common sense, hands-on skills, and practice for midwives and birth support people that hope to ensure that birth remains in the hands of the birthing family.
Claire is so excited and honored to be a Spinning Babies® Approved Trainer offering Spinning Babies® Workshops in New Zealand and internationally. She is passionate about the ‘physiology before force’ approach that Spinning Babies® promotes and she has seen from her own practice how beneficial this approach alongside the understanding of anatomy and the application of gentle hands-on skills can be.
Claire’s own mother was a midwife and La Leche League councilor. Claire began her journey with birth 19 years ago when she assisted a homebirth midwife- her first 2 births were twins at home. She then moved to New Zealand to train and practice as a homebirth midwife. She has facilitated pregnancy and postnatal support groups, antenatal education and pregnancy yoga for the past 15 years.
Prior to joining the Spinning Babies® team, Claire ran the Sunnyside Up workshops for 5 years around New Zealand looking at the gentle hands-on skills birth workers and parents can use when there were challenges in the birth due to posterior position of the baby.
She has presented at conferences in New Zealand and internationally. Claire is currently part of the New Zealand College of the Midwives education team providing workshops around New Zealand on the Midwifery First Year of Practice programme and normal birth.
Each year Claire travels with a group of birth workers to remote areas in northern Loas to offer midwifery education in emergency skills, integrating kindness into care and hands-on skills to support ease in birth.
