What’s it all ‘Blooming Well’ about?

It’s about you. It’s about you feeling cared for, looked after, prepared, prioritised and acknowledged for all that you do. Motherhood, from the moment of conception, is different for us all, but it’s often an incredible mixture of things. It’s wonderful, exhausting, heart-filling, worrying, exhilarating, eye-opening, mind blowing, and did I already say exhausting?! It’s the best and the hardest thing that many of us do.

But motherhood gets overlooked. Mothers are amazing but we are expected to hold and achieve so much, and in amongst it all, many of us don’t prioritise our own needs and self-care because our heads and time are so full of the needs of those around us.

Blooming Well shines a light on motherhood and the importance of kind, compassionate support.  We create opportunity for mothers to feel supported in their breastfeeding journey and make space for mothers to take some time and nourishment for themselves. The old saying is absolutely right, ‘you can’t pour from an empty cup’.

My journey so far…

I qualified as a nurse in 2007 and then a midwife shortly afterwards in 2010, having always been fascinated by all things pregnancy, birth and baby. I loved being a midwife and spent many years working in Oxford.

I became dedicated to providing high-quality breastfeeding support after having a challenging breastfeeding journey with my first baby. I totally expected to breastfeed my baby without any problems but this can’t have been further from the truth. I think I ticked most breastfeeding challenge boxes over the first few months and I really struggled to find the accurate, consistent, compassionate support that I so badly needed. This experience drove me to take on additional training and I ran a Breastfeeding Cafe on my return from maternity leave.

Unfortunately, the shifts and oncalls of midwifery were not compatible with childcare and so after having my second baby I took a bit of a different path for a while as a Research Midwife for the University of Oxford. During this time, I fell in love with yoga and trained as a vinyasa yoga teacher before I went on to complete my pregnancy and postnatal yoga teacher training.

I’m really passionate about women feeling prepared, nurtured and heard and having access to the care and support they need, especially in the postnatal period. I am delighted that so many of my passions have come together to form Blooming Well.