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Postnatal (Mentored)
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Birth (Mentored)
Lives in: Hemel Hempstead HP3
Local info and availability:
Based in Hemel Hempstead, I am available to offer tailored support in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and North London.
Other services:
Hypnobirthing, Biomechanics for Birth, Postnatal Planning, Infant Feeding Support.
How to contact Stacey:
Use the Contact form below or:
https://staceythedoula.co.uk/
stacey@staceythedoula.co.uk
07542 387677
About Me
About Me
Hi there 🙂 I am Stacey, a Birth and Postnatal Doula, hypnobirthing practitioner and NCT trained Breastfeeding Counsellor.
The experience of becoming a mother changed me in so many ways, including my career aspirations. In fact, for the first time in my life I felt I knew what I wanted to do. Moving from a career in marketing, I went to university to study for a foundation degree, Birth and Beyond, with NCT and Worcester University and I haven’t looked back.
With more than 5 years’ experience supporting families with new babies, I am deeply passionate about delivering personalised support that aligns with my clients’ individual needs, goals, and aspirations. Ensuring my clients have access the most up to date evidenced-based information enables them to make informed decisions/refusals and maintain a sense of control as they confidently navigate their journey to parenthood.
I am committed to promoting empowered birth experiences and prioritising postnatal healing to create a strong foundation for new families to thrive. My key areas of focus are:
- For the mother to feel listened to and ‘held’ throughout pregnancy and beyond, ensuring their sense of control is maintained and decisions respected.
- Safeguarding the experience of the partner, who can often feel excluded, supporting them to find their unique and critical role during labour.
- Increase recognition and respect of the postnatal period as a time for rest, nourishment and, ultimately, healing for the mother regardless of the type of birth.
Birth Doula
The birth of a baby is a transformative experience which can, and should, be empowering regardless of the birth setting (eg homebirth, hospital) or type of birth (vaginal, caesarean), and I am committed to supporting you achieve this through:
- Assisting you in developing your preferences for labour and birth, guided by your hopes, past experiences, and the latest evidence-based information, to enable you to make informed decisions.
- During labour and birth, I will help to create and protect a safe, oxytocin-fuelled environment and advocate for you, when needed, to enable you and your partner (if you have one) to focus on each other and your baby.
- Once your new baby arrives, I will ensure you feel settled, having washed and eaten, provide support with feeding (including the first feed), and any information on taking care of yourself and your baby as your postnatal journey begins.
Proven to be beneficial for the whole family (birthing person, partner and baby), I can also offer one to one hypnobirthing preparation as an addition to the Birth Doula package.
Postnatal Doula
Though widely unrecognised in western culture, the postnatal period is a vitally important time for rest, nourishment and, ultimately, healing for the mother.
My purpose is to specifically not focus on the baby (everyone else will be doing that!), but to focus on the needs of the mother and her partner.
As your postnatal doula, I will take time, to support you to consider what can be put in place now, before your baby arrives, to help you manage the foggy, incoherent days to come. Guided by a holistic approach, I will tailor my support to your specific needs which may include:
- Supporting emotional needs through active listening and a non-judgemental approach.
- Providing encouragement and with baby-care as you take your first steps as a new parent.
- Caring for your newborn to allow you undisturbed time to yourself to rest, sleep, take a long bath.
- Signposting to evidenced-based information to help you make informed decisions.
- Accompanying you to appointments and other trips out of the house.
- Supporting you with your feeding choices.
- Preparing nutritious snacks and meals to ensure you and your family are nourished.
- Light housework (washing up, laundry, surface cleaning, general tidying etc
For more information on the services I offer, please visit my website, www.staceythedoula.co.uk.
Testimonials
‘Stacey was outstanding during our birth and we are so thankful we had her there. She made sure to support both myself and my husband, and thought of a million different ways to be helpful that we would never have prepped for. When complications arose, Stacey was so caring and supportive, coming into theatre with me while my husband stayed with our baby.
Again, having Stacey’s support immediately after birth was so invaluable. She was the only one that seemed to get things moving, and she made sure I had a chance to feed the baby as soon as I was out of surgery (something that seemed to be overlooked by the midwives). She stayed well after I was finished with surgery, making sure we were settled before leaving.
We could not recommend Stacey highly enough – she was caring, knowledgeable, accepting and overall wonderful.’
L.B. February 2024
‘The day I placed a phone call to Stacey I was in the throws of familiar post partum depression and anxiety. I didn’t want to soldier through it this time I desperately wanted support. Stacey was so reassuring and although she wasn’t booked to start straight away, she gave me hope that things would start to get better.
From the day she arrived Stacey made me feel safe and secure. I could breath when she knocked on the door. Stacey got me through the most intense weeks of my post partum depression coupled with kids off school and back to back Jewish Festivals to cook and prepare for.
I referred to Stacey as my “ fairy godmother” as it truly felt magical that someone could just rock up in her little purple car and make most of my worries go away just by being a supportive presence.’
J.B. February 2024
‘We had a wonderful experience with Stacey as our doula. She is warm, supportive, and easy to engage with, and really takes the time to get to know you and to understand your hopes and concerns.
Labour was something I felt quite anxious about but our sessions with Stacey left me feeling calm, prepared, and in control. She sincerely believes that birth can be a positive and empowering experience and did her level best to help us achieve that – even when things didn’t go exactly according to plan!
We also really valued the practical advice on stretches, exercises and relaxations Stacey shared with us, and were so grateful for her guidance on breastfeeding in the early days following our daughter’s arrival.
She was an integral part of our journey and we are so pleased to have had her with us!.
S.M. August 2023
Stacey has a heart of gold and you can tell she is passionate about what she does. She came into our lives when we were struggling and fearful of doing the wrong things with our newborn baby. She provided a safety net and support in this period and really set us up well to look after our boy. Questions which we may have asked others previously but could no longer do so or had conflicting advice, Stacey was able to talk us through the options subjectively and work through solutions for us.
As we had recently experienced a bereavement in the family and progressive pregnancy complications we had a lot to cope with and it was a lot for Stacey to have offloaded on her but sitting and talking everything through made it easier for us to cope. We would highly recommend new parents consider the services of a doula as
we really benefitted in those early days and weeks. Stacey helped to build our confidence at this critical time for us and getting this extra support really made
a difference to us.
Any parent that works with Stacey will be lucky to have her as their doula. It was like having a member of our family or a close friend with us rather than someone that had been employed to do a job, this is an incredibly important skill for a doula.
L.F. August 2023
From the moment we met Stacey, we felt like we were being held with care and understanding. Stacey gives the best hugs and we laughed and cried together as she saw us through our birth with perspective, empathy and sensitivity.
Stacey’s enthusiasm for the magic of birth and having children was infectious and helped us feel more ready to become parents. Importantly for us, Stacey treated us as a couple and a team, and really got the present and active role we all wanted to play in the birth. Without family nearby and having also experienced some acute anxiety during pregnancy, Stacey became an important, constant and caring point of contact throughout.
Stacey was available to come with to appointments, extremely communicative and responsive in a rapidly changing situation when the birth happened, and helped us reframe expectations about birth and our experience of it to a more positive position. She enabled us to have an empowered birthing experience by giving us time, language and perspective to consider how we wanted to approach our birth and how to be adaptable and ready to welcome our baby, however she ended up arriving.
Stacey’s support in preparing to welcome our baby into the world and our family was integral and we’re incredibly glad to have worked with her.
S.C. June 2023
Stacey has been our birth and postnatal doula and I couldn’t recommend her enough. She is very calm, knowledgeable and was great with the baby! She helped us in the early days where everything gets a bit blurry, she took care of us and supported us as we entered this new universe of parenting and sleep deprivation, she made the journey smoother. She is a very pleasant person and knows a lot about breastfeeding which is very handy! Having her support made all the difference to us and we’ll be forever grateful.
E.C. January 2023