At the beginning of 2010 I found out I was (unexpectedly) pregnant with my son, Oscar, who is now nearly five. I was working ridiculously long hours for a big creative design agency in a work hard/play hard environment – so much so that I’d contributed my late period to how exhausted and burnt out I was.

After the initial shock of finding out my permanent state of fatigue was actually down to a tiny foetus, I began to turn all my thoughts over to how the hell I was going to get this human being out of my body. It’s safe to say I was pretty terrified of giving birth and it wasn’t until I spoke to a friend who described her birth as “romantic, peaceful and enjoyable” that I’d even heard about the notion of hypnobirthing. My first instinct was that it was a load of mumbo jumbo and I was definitely more than skeptical about this idea of an enjoyable birth.

By the end of our first hypnobirthing class, though, my mind was blown. I couldn’t believe that this was the first time in 25 years of being a woman that I was actually learning how my body was designed to work. I went from being terrified about giving birth – my goal set as “survival” – to feeling calm, confident and totally empowered, and actually looking forward to giving birth.

I was working ridiculously long hours for a big creative design agency in a work-hard/play-hard environment – so much so that I’d contributed my late period to how exhausted and burnt out I was

Oscar’s birth was the most profound experience of my life. It instigated a whole new level of love between me and my husband – I’ve never felt so close to another human being as I did when I was in labour. It ignited this inherent feeling that I was capable of anything and stronger than I knew. It blew all my fears out of the window and made me realise what it was to be a human, and a woman.

In the days and weeks following Oscar’s birth I heard other women talking about their traumatic and disempowering birth experiences. My experience wasn’t without its share of difficulties, but I knew that at no point did I feel helpless or out of control. It dawned on me that this was all about knowledge, and that it was understanding the turns my labour took and being able to make informed decisions that made my experience a positive one. I can’t really remember thinking about it for long, but I just knew that this is what I was meant to be doing. I booked on to hypnobirthing practitioner training whilst I was on maternity leave, and never went back to my previous job.

When I first started teaching I’d just teach a couple of women at a time and because I wasn’t earning much money from it I decided to start doing a couple of days a week freelancing at a local design agency. We were lucky to have family nearby so didn’t have to fork out loads in childcare, meaning I could work part time and then build up my hypnobirthing practice in the evenings and at weekends. Within a year my practice had grown from seeing four women a month to 12 women a month, and now it’s around 30+ women a month with a team of 9 maternity therapists in my collective team and a growing portfolio of celebrity clients.

Starting my own business has been an amazing experience, but hasn’t been without its own share of stress. It’s hard to keep my time boundaried and I often end up working on my laptop late into the night

I often get asked how I grew my business so quickly, but if I’m honest it happened fairly organically. I paid for a very small amount of online advertising, built myself a website and the majority of my clients came from word-of-mouth. In hindsight, I realise that believing wholeheartedly in what you do means you never really need to sell it, and I genuinely care and invest in the women I work with. I no longer pay for any advertising and my classes are consistently full up to three months in advance.

Starting my own business has been an amazing experience, but hasn’t been without its own share of stress. It’s hard to keep my time boundaried and I often end up working on my laptop late into the night, which drives my husband mad. Because I love what I do, I find it hard to switch off, and I struggle to give it any less than my all. It’s also stressful wearing all the hats – accounts, admin, HR, teaching, marketing, etc. and balancing that with being an attentive and present mum.

Working with people at such an intimate time in their lives can be tiring, too, purely because emotionally giving so much of yourself to them inevitably leads to phases of feeling quite depleted, although now I’m better at looking out for that and building in time to do nothing (and acknowledging that as a valuable use of my time!). The bonuses hugely out way the challenges though. I get to take and pick my son up from school and take him to his swimming lessons. I don’t have to answer to anyone or deal with bullshit politics and I get to dictate the direction of my business’ future, which is so exciting. And best of all, I get to work with totally incredible women and help them achieve the empowering start to motherhood they deserve.

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