Mindful Birthing and Parenting Foundation

The Mindful Birthing and Parenting Foundation is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that provides Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting (MBCP) education and training to parents, health professionals, healthcare organizations, and researchers in order to improve perinatal outcomes and relational wellbeing. 

Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting (MBCP) is an evidence-based program for expectant parents that integrates mindfulness skills and practice with childbirth and parenting education.

>> Mindfulness is the awareness that arises from paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally. 

 – Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD

Founded in 1998, by nurse-midwife Nancy Bardacke, CNM, the MBCP program is one of the first adaptations of the world-renowned Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program (MBSR) founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD. In the years since its inception, thousands of expectant parents have used MBCP to help them navigate the transformational processes of pregnancy and childbirth, as well as the intense, joyful, and sometimes stressful experiences of being a parent.

Nancy Bardacke, CNM, MA, MBCP Founding Director

Nancy Bardacke, midwife, mindfulness teacher, and the founding director of the Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting (MBCP) Program, has been assisting birthing families since 1971. A longtime meditation practitioner, Nancy began her professional training in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reductions (MBSR) with Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, in 1994. After teaching MBSR for a number of years, Nancy began adapting the program to meet the needs of pregnant women and their partners, creating the MBCP program. Nancy has taught MBCP to more than 1500 expectant parents and has trained hundreds of MBCP teachers across six continents.

Nancy was an Assistant Clinical Professor in the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) School of Nursing and served as the Director of the MBCP program at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at UCSF until she retired from those positions in 2017 in order to give her full attention to developing the Mindful Birthing and Parenting Foundation and the MBCP Teacher Training program. Nancy and her colleague, Larissa Duncan, PhD, Director of the Center for Child and Family Well-Being, School of Human Ecology at the 

University of Wisconsin-Madison, have developed a robust research program to study the impact of mindfulness skills in reducing stress, and anxiety during pregnancy, pain during childbirth, and enhanced attunement between parents and their infants after birth. Nancy is also in collaboration with colleagues globally who are developing MBCP Instructor Training Courses, as well as researchers who are studying the impact of the MBCP program on expectant parents and their babies.

Nancy’s award-winning book, Mindful Birthing: Training the Mind, Body and Heart for Childbirth and Beyond was published in July 2012 by HarperOne and has been translated into Dutch, German, French, Turkish, Romanian, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, and Chinese. Nancy was named one of Mindful magazine's "10 Powerful Women of the Mindfulness Movement" in 2021.