Hiring Dr. Gilliland

Hiring Dr. Gilliland to Present

Speaking & Engagement Opportunities

Enhance your work, amplify your project, offer CME opportunities, and engage with your target audiences more meaningfully with Dr. Gilliland as your speaker or presenter. Choose from tailored speaking sessions covering a wide array of topics within Dr. Gilliland’s vast expertise, uniquely designed for:

Medical Organizations

Medical Organizations

Sexuality Education

Sexuality Education

Workshops

Workshops

Podcasts & Interviews

Podcasts & Interviews

Healthcare Systems

Healthcare Systems

Conferences

Conferences

Roundtables

Roundtables

Guest Appearances

Guest Appearances 

Presentation Topics

Tailoring Evidence-Based Content to Meet Your Needs

Dr. Gilliland has years of experience presenting to medical professionals, academics, researchers, corporations, and nonprofits on key topics affecting laboring and postpartum people. Explore her past sessions below for a better understanding of Dr. Gilliland’s scope and how you can leverage topics like these to enhance your work.

Speaking Opportunities

Education Topics

Doula Helping Pregnant Woman

Working with the Laboring Brain

The Mechanisms Behind Birth Doula Support

Dr. Gilliland explains the social, emotional, behavioral, neurological, and hormonal processes that intertwine to create the attachment experience of human labor and birth, and how our current practices influence whether the birth “succeeds” and how people relate to themselves and one another afterwards.

In Part One of this talk, Dr. Gilliland explains the allegories between release of the social peptide oxytocin during normal human interaction, and the purpose of the hormone during human labor and birth.  Dr. Gilliland makes a potent argument that the social purposes of human labor and birth are designed to strengthen attachment relationships and caregiving templates in parents and children.

These processes are intertwined with the limbic system’s encoding of potent long lasting memories, and the release of oxytocin and catecholamines in labor. These processes explain the effectiveness of the professional birth doula rather than family member in obtaining positive obstetric, neonatal and postpartum outcomes.

This talk examines contemporary common birth practices and makes suggestions for alterations that would enhance the possibility of spontaneous oxytocin flow and lowering perception of pain in labor.

Part Three of this talk illustrates how birthing in a hospital is a cross-cultural experience for most people, but especially people of color.  It details how it is also a cross-cultural experience for the care providers as well. It concludes with a series of statements that birthing people of color have shared about their experiences and in their own words what they wish White care providers understood.  (Add 20 – 30 minutes)

  • Participants will be able to explain at least three ways the biological oxytocin and catecholamine systems correlate and influence the psychological attachment and defense systems.
  • Participants will be able to restate how the Attachment, Defense, and Caregiving Systems operate in labor to influence labor coping, bids for caregiving, and need for caretaking in the laboring person.
  • Participants will be able to explain why supporting spontaneous oxytocin flow is an advantage to labor progress, vaginal delivery, and subjective birth satisfaction.
  • Participants will be able to demonstrate at least 8 NEW strategies to promote spontaneous oxytocin release.
  • Participants will be able to list at least four normative nursing practices that interfere with the laboring brain’s ability to produce a functioning labor and spontaneous vaginal delivery, AND adaptations to practice that reduce the negative impact.
  • Participants will be able to list three positive obstetric outcomes, neonatal outcomes, and bonding/attachment outcomes from the birth doula support literature.
  • Participants will be able to restate why most patient care in labor and delivery is cross cultural, and why understanding this is empowering to nurses and medical staff.
  • Participants will be able to restate the possible thoughts and influences on persons of color birthing in Meriter Hospital and why this is a challenging cross cultural experience for both White medical staff and the patient of Color.
Why Are We Trying To Turn Men Into Women?

Why Are We Trying To Turn Men Into Women?

Meeting a Father’s Real Needs During Labor

Men are in the midst of cultural change of redefining fatherhood. What hasn’t changed yet is the cultural assumptions of perinatal professionals towards men’s involvement in pregnancy and childbirth. Taking a biopsychosocial approach to understanding male behavior and needs during labor, Dr. Gilliland utilizes gender theory, highly regarded studies, and her own original research to increase the effectiveness of perinatal professionals. Participants can expect to comprehend male behavior more deeply by confronting their cultural assumptions, and bringing together their own experience with new knowledge.

  • Review the transformation of paternal roles during childbirth from 1960 – 2010.
  • Compare female and male communication styles that influence prenatal, postpartum and labor interactions.
  • Trace a model of paternal influence on prenatal, labor and birth outcomes that is based on father’s unacknowledged emotional needs.
  • Articulate relevant research on men’s experiences of pregnancy and childbirth.
  • Understand how men’s unique perspective and increased distress during labor can lead to paternal birth related PTSD.
  • Illustrate the unique role of the childbirth professionals to enhance men’s natural stress coping responses and enhance couple intimacy and satisfaction during and after the birth experience.
From Lovers to Parents and Back Again

From Lovers to Parents and Back Again

A Time of Shifting Sexual Identity

All parents expect sexual adjustments during the postpartum period, however few report feeling prepared for the massive changes that occur. The birth experience may also have a psychological impact that shows up in a couple’s sexual relationship. Both birth and postpartum doulas are uniquely situated to fill the educational gap and provide postpartum support as parents work through these changes.

  • Explain the subtle messages communicated to women about their bodies and sexual functioning during typical labor and birth experiences in North America.
  • Restate the possible emotional and sexual impact on husbands and male partners of viewing medical procedures and childbirth on their wife or female partner.
  • List birth procedures that affect sexual functioning and those that do not.
  • Explain the sexual concerns of both parents during the first year postpartum.
  • List strategies within the doula’s scope of practice that can assist with effective sexual adjustment.
Doulas as Facilitators of Transformation and Grief

Doulas as Facilitators of Transformation and Grief

Doula work is physically demanding, emotionally draining, and spiritually life changing. In order to create the emotional space of being present with clients and touching their hearts, the doula opens her heart. When a doula assists a woman[1], she is facilitating her emotional process into becoming a mother to this baby. She transforms her identity through her labor. In addition, there may be grief over what is left behind in this transformation, and the mother will often look to her doula to help process or feel her way through her anger, fear, sadness and acceptance of this new self and new circumstances. To help a woman negotiate her fear and pain takes an authentic connection on the part of the doula.

In this powerful session, based on grounded theory methodology and 40 interviews with experienced doulas, Gilliland explores the ideas of doula work as a spiritual path and the doula as a facilitator of personal transformation in the modern world.

  • Describe the advanced doula roles of “trusted guide” and “wise witness”.
  • Illustrate how a woman’s personal identity and sense of self shifts during the birth process and how the doula can facilitate that.
  • Analyze a mother’s birth story for elements of the five stages of grief.
  • Assess doula’s stories for simple and complex emotional support strategies used by doulas that facilitate the processes of grief, loss, and transformation.
Relationship Violence and The Doula

Relationship Violence and The Doula

In this session, Gilliland utilizes her training as a perinatal professional and women’s advocate to speak compassionately and supportively about the issue of relationship violence. Doulas may inadvertently find themselves supporting a mother experiencing emotional, financial, sexual or physical abuse. This session explores the realities of relationship violence, and appropriate responses that are within the doula’s role to help alleviate ethical dilemmas and keep doulas safe.

  • Describe the different types of abuse that may be a part of a violent relationship.
  • Illustrate why teenage women often experience relationship abuse.
  • Outline the possible consequences of seeking help and how they affect a mother’s choices to leave or stay in an abusive relationship.
  • Recognize the importance of the doula’s role as a reliable support person for the labor and birth in the mother’s life.
  • List three strategies to maximize the doula’s safety when working with a mother who may be in a violent or abusive relationship.
Circumcision Counseling

Circumcision Counseling In A Time of Cultural Change

Birth professionals often find themselves giving parents information about the intact penis and circumcision while having personal feelings regarding the procedure. In this webinar, Dr. Gilliland explores the dilemma faced by professionals and solutions for tailoring information for different audiences with clashing values. In addition, she offers strategies for professionals who wish to not serve clients planning on circumcising their male infants. As a professional doula, birth doula trainer, childbirth educator, and certified sexuality educator, she brings over twenty years of experience to her presentation.

  • Review facts and trends regarding the intact penis through the lens of cultural change.
  • List four strategies for discussing the intact penis and circumcision with clarity, compassion and avoiding emotional escalation.
  • Examine the dilemma of choice through a variety of ethical frameworks.
  • Explore two techniques for respectfully avoiding service to families who plan not to leave their son’s penis intact (circumcise) when that is important to the birth professional.

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