Victoria's Journey

“Victoria originally came to my pregnancy yoga classes and over some years I observed her experiences of becoming a mother for a second time. Her story is inspirational in how she turned the most difficult of experiences into her strength and how it has led her into doing what she does now - supporting other women on their journey into motherhood as a birth & postnatal doula. Lucky women they are! Its an honour to share her story here.”

We were blessed with a surprise pregnancy back in 2009. Our darling daughter was born out of my tummy after a ‘failure to dilate’. While it wasn’t a traumatic experience, I was surprised as I felt ready and confident to birth my baby vaginally. My personal healing from my birth came from joining a local mummy and baby class postnatally where I built friendships and had the time to talk about and normalise my experience. I had the space to connect with my baby and focus solely on her and I in that moment. Those Monday mornings were precious, like therapy for us. The class was Lynn’s mama & baby class at the, then Active birth centre.

After I stopped breastfeeding to wean, we decided to try for a sibling. Two years of TTC, we were referred to a private clinic for IVF treatment. Three rounds later, we fell pregnant.

In 2015, as I lay in a private room tucked away on the labour ward, I could hear the screams of a lady in the throes of active labour. I found myself breathing deeply, willing her to breathe down into her body; she sounded so distressed, screaming outwardly, I desperately wanted to comfort her.

I had been admitted to the hospital after the 20 week scan showed that our twins' hearts had stopped beating - a late miscarriage after many years of secondary fertility struggles. In the midst of grief I found hope and strength from the women I could hear around me. It may sound dramatic but those few days on the labour ward were what I would describe as an epiphany moment in my life. As a couple, we were so well cared for in the hospital and so held by the maternity staff that, I left my room, on returning to my family at home, found myself wondering what on earth I was doing in my work as a floral designer. A conversation with a mum from my daughter's school a few months later led her to invite me to join the MVP (Maternity Voices Partnership) group to share our experience at our local hospital.

I soon became a MVP user rep, working closely with the chair on maternity related projects over the coming year. Further serendipitous moments happened when my dear friend who was staying with us asked me about my floristry business, hearing that I was turning away work to reconsider my path. She told me that her mother was a doula and teacher with her partner, the renowned Michel Odent- I'd had no idea - and within a few weeks she kindly invited me to attend her 4 day course to see what I thought. I couldn't believe it! I was blown away with the resonance of the training and was compelled to delve deeper.

I booked myself onto the Active Birth training program taught by the passionate birth advocate and founder Janet Balaskas, co-founder Lynn and team. By this time, we had successfully planted our embryo and I was in the first trimester of a new pregnancy. I was invited by Janet Balaskas to join her hypnobirthing training as well, so I was fully indulging myself in this new field and preparing for our own birth simultaneously. We hired a doula to support our journey and our healthy baby boy was born in 2017, eight years after his big sister. We planned for a VBAC homebirth but as we went past the EDD date and multiple factors putting us at risk, we made the decision to go into the hospital for induction.

We stepped into our labour experience feeling fully equipped for every eventuality, our choices felt heard and we were given time and options to consider. We held back on intervention where we could and tried where possible to be unobserved or monitored. I can honestly say our birth experience was positive and empowered because of this - even if it wasn't the homebirth I would have wished for.

For a second time, I joined Lynns new baby and me class. I was experiencing great difficulty this time with breastfeeding our boy. He was tongue tied. I couldn't bring myself to look at any other mothers in the class this time as I felt conscious of my frustrated baby and difficulty latching. I remember walking up the hill to class telling myself to be brave, reassuring myself it was okay. I looked around the room, caught eyes with Lynn and all the other mothers, some with cracked nipples, nipple shields, formula milk and quickly realised we were all muddling through, trying our best, most importantly, we had made it to a group 10 weeks post birth. I have made life long friends through that group as well as with Lynn.

A few months into new motherhood, I joined a doula workshop day with our baby boy in tow to further explore the possibility of a new career path. This cemented my passion for all things maternal. A year of maternity leave and plenty of first hand knowledge, reflection on our births and a heap of reading around the subject, my next step to take was to find a doula mentor. I can clearly see the link from flowers and nature to birth. I think I may have always wanted to be in the birth world, I just didn't know it until I went through my own life experiences. Now, I have set aside my floristry tools to support birthing people to blossom into parenthood.

I am now a mentored birth doula with Doula UK and have followed a handful of couples into and out of the birth room so far. I am a volunteer with Happy baby Community, a charity formed to support pregnant women who have fled violence or traffickers. I am a breastfeeding helper with the BFN supporting new mums in our local Islington community. I also remain a rep with our local MVP at the Whittington hospital. I believe, now more than ever in these covid-19 times, birthing people need both the continuity of care during their labour and birth and the support of a neutral person to hold them as they find their way through the matrescence period - the becoming of a mother.

PostScript: In April 2022 Victoria launched Womb & Bloom a beautiful collective of birth workers supporting families from conception through pregnancy, birth into parenthood, do take a look around this wonderful collective.