About

Amelie Cresswell
Birth and postpartum doula in South West London
Pregnancy & postnatal yoga teacher in Richmond & Kew
Baby massage and baby yoga teacher & trainer

Thank you for taking the time to come visit this page and learn a little bit more about me and why I care so much about the work I do!

Pregnancy, birth and early motherhood are SUCH unique times in a woman’s life. Times that are not always (or even often) honoured, valued and acknowledged in our modern life for what they truly are. Nor truly well supported.

A real rollercoaster, physically, emotionally, and in a very pragmatic way too! From the sickness, tiredness and anxiety of the first trimester, to the heaviness and impatience of the third. The big, daunting unknown of giving birth. The change, chaos, exhaustion and endless questioning of early postpartum… The moving forward, with our new bodies and growing babies.

It’s a lot. And how we approach it matters, a lot. I get it, because I’ve been there myself and supported hundreds of women on that journey since.

How I came to do what I do

It’s through my own journey of motherhood that I came to this path, 13 years ago.

After dabbling with yoga in my 20s (which didn’t really ‘click’ with me!), I truly connected with this practice in 2012 when expecting my first baby. When everything about pregnancy, my changing body and what lay ahead felt new and a bit (a lot!) daunting, attending pregnancy yoga classes completely transformed my experience.

Week after week, I discovered how to support my changing body, address these aches and pains, calm my anxieties (which I had never managed to tame before) and connect deeply with my baby… It enabled me to truly enjoy my pregnancy right up and past my ‘due date’, and feeling completely serene and empowered about my ability to give birth too!

However, despite doing what I felt at the time was thorough preparation (with a ‘classic’ local group antenatal course and my weekly pregnancy yoga), I came to experience a very tough, traumatic first birth, swiftly followed by a ‘crash landing’ into motherhood which I really struggled to navigate for months on end, and took me years to process.

At this very vulnerable time, it was postnatal yoga, and early mum & baby nurture practices that helped me heal my changed body, feel more rested when sleep was so scarce, connect with my little girl and trust my fragile mother’s instincts, and ultimately, gradually, feel like myself again.

And it was also hours and weeks spent researching birth, learning more about it, to try to make sense of what had happened, help me process it and build trust that I could have a different experience next time (which I did, and proved so healing and affirming).

There isn’t a day I don’t wish I knew then what I learnt and know know, and had the wise, caring support of a doula to walk this path with me.

This was when the seed of providing much better support to other women through this earth-shattering, transformational experience was planted. First as a pregnancy and postnatal yoga teacher and birth educator, and then later as a birth & postpartum doula, once my own children got older and a little less dependent on me!

To make this my one and only work, my purpose.

To hold this very special space for you (and your baby), may it be in my yoga classes or as a doula in your birth space or in postpartum, and help you find calm, ease, deep understanding and trust in your body, baby, birth and yourself at these important thresholds of pregnancy, birth, early motherhood, and beyond.