About Birth Story
It’s easy to feel overloaded and overwhelmed by the huge amount of information out there. Communities and families are spread out, and health professionals overstretched and unable to give personalised care, so we can be left feeling disconnected, unsupported, and wondering ‘how do I do this?’
It would feel so much better if you had someone on your team – who knows your story and is with you throughout your journey. Someone helping you to navigate the maternity landscape and the institutions that are often inflexible and highly risk averse.
I aim to make the pregnancy, birthing and the new parenting experience less stressful, and a whole lot more enjoyable for women and their partners. I’m fired up by my own experiences, and those of all the women, partners and families whom I’ve supported over the past 11 years, working with pregnant, labouring women, their partners and new parents.
I provide informative, practical, relaxed sessions, where any questions are welcome, and any scenarios considered. This is after all, about you, your birth and your family. I’ll help you to feel heard, supported and guided through your pregnancy, in one-to-one sessions in your home, or online.
During birth I can be by your side to help protect your birthing space, hold your hand and rub your back. I’ll provide support for your partner too so that the team around you is united and strong. I’ll stay with you while you begin to feed your baby and I’ll check in with you during the following few days to ensure feeding is going well, and to assist you and signpost to further specialist support if needed.
If you need me for longer, I can come to your home up to 3 months after the birth and give emotional, informational and practical support. We can look at options for infant feeding and sleeping, I can hold the baby while you sleep, rest and recover.
Sometimes after a previous traumatising event or birth experience, parents find themselves coping with symptoms of trauma. It may be that having someone to talk this through with, to begin to understand what events led to your distress, to put context to your feelings, may help you to start healing.
Our birth stories, our own, and those of our children, deserve to be heard.
About Anna
I’m Anna, a mum of two great kids, aged 13 and 18. I’ve been a single and partnered parent, I’ve experienced birth and also loss. These experiences sparked a desire in me to help make the pregnancy, birth and postnatal journey better for others. Whilst being very grateful for our free National Health Service, I felt that my antenatal and postnatal care was impersonal and lacked continuity. The care through my births was patchy to say the least and I was left feeling scared, bewildered and unprepared. In retrospect, I wish that I had found specialist support, sought evidence-based research and sometimes asked, ‘What are my options?’.
My path to starting Birth Story has taken me down different routes. After 10 years of working in the NHS as a Therapy Technician (while having my kids), I left to study, firstly for a Health and Human Sciences Diploma, followed by a year of midwifery practice. I supported many women in pregnancy and labour, gained invaluable experiences and insight, then decided that, rather than continue training as a midwife, my strengths and passion for personalised continuity of care would be better suited to being a doula. I trained in hypnobirthing and antenatal teaching, then as a Birth and Postnatal Doula (I am a recognised member of Doula UK), and then as a 3 Step Rewind Practitioner (for birth trauma). I am particularly passionate about teaching people about, and preserving, normal physiological, undisturbed, birth.
I’ve supported births in homes, birth centres and in labour wards throughout London. Through water births, caesarean births, VBAC’s, hypnobirthing, drug-free births and births with many drugs. Births with solo parents, same sex parents, IVF births, twin births, unassisted births, traumatised dads and traumatised mums, survivors of abuse, through miscarriage, abortion and loss.
I can provide a current DBS if requested and I am fully insured.
Qualifications
Ongoing learning in Rachel Reed’s Reclaiming Childbirth Collective
Recognised Birth Doula (Doula UK)
Recognised Postnatal Doula (Doula UK)
Biomechanics for Birth
Postnatal Recovery Massage
Mindful Rebozo
Traumatic Birth Recovery 3 Step Rewind
Breastfeeding Case Studies
Safeguarding Adults and Children
Paediatric and Adult Basic Life Support
Birth Bliss Academy Antenatal and Birth Preparation
Michel Odent’s Paramana Doula Course
Developing Doulas Course
NHS Paediatric Physiotherapy Technician
Midwifery Certificate of Higher Education
KG Hypnobirthing and Antenatal Teacher Training Diploma
Health and Human Sciences Diploma