Amelie Cresswell

Whatever your hopes and wishes for your birth & fourth trimester, how you get to experience these, how they unfold and how you feel and are made to feel at each and every stage, deeply matters. Not because there’s one ‘right way’ to give birth or do postpartum, but because these experiences will stay with you forever, change you, and affect you and your baby and how you go into motherhood together.

I believe every woman deserves to approach birth & early motherhood from a place of calm, understanding and power, not anxiety or fear. To feel thoroughly held and empowered, not left unsure, overwhelmed or blind-sided.

Whether you’re expecting your first baby or adding to your family, as your doula, I’m passionate to provide you with the personalised, unbiased guidance, presence, advocacy and holistic support you need to navigate pregnancy, birth & postpartum with more comfort, confidence and trust, and help you stack the odds in your favour of a positive birth & gentle beginnings with your baby, whatever this means for you.

Because this is the way it should be.

As a doula, I passionately believe that:

• There is no 'right' way to birth - only the right way for you

I support all types of births, including home births, birth centre births, labour ward births with and without epidurals, induced labours, births in ‘high risk’ pregnancies, elective and emergency caesareans, and more. I will never hold any judgement about the choices you make, they are yours and yours alone.
What matters to me is that you can make these choices from an informed place, out of power rather than fear. To help you work out and experience birth in a way that feels right to you & your baby, sharing ways and need-to-know information to stack the odds in your favour of making this happen, and to ensure you feel held, heard and grounded along the way, even if birth needs to take a different path.

• Truly understanding how birth works changes everything

However you’re planning to give birth, understanding birth & postpartum physiology - how your body and your baby work during and after birth - is key to help you navigate your birth planning, decision-making, actual labour & birth, and immediate postpartum, in an informed and empowered way.
This is one of the key elements of the preparation I offer. So you can understand how best to support this physiology (and what can be done when it is disrupted) to the best benefit to you and your baby.

• Helping you understand the maternity system is key

Now more than ever before, truly understanding the maternity system you’re under the care of, how it functions, your rights in it, and what options are (really) open to you (maybe some you didn’t even know you had) is fundamental, however you’re hoping to give birth. I’ll give you tools and knowledge to best navigate it, and advocate for yourself and your needs, before, during and after birth.

• Your body and mind deserves preparation and care

Birth is first and foremost a physical and emotional process. Proactively preparing and looking after the body-mind is a central part of my unique approach as a doula, both prenatally and postnatally. My support & resources integrate my expertise in pregnancy & postpartum yoga, pelvic floor support, birth biomechanics, hypnobirthing, mindfulness and nervous system support.

• Postpartum deserves as much attention & support as birth

Birth is such a big milestone, it’s very easy to bring all of our focus on it. Projecting past it can be hard, especially as first time parents, or after a difficult first birth. But once your baby’s here, it often feels like it’s actually just the beginning. So much to learn and get to grips with, so much to manage and navigate, on often very little sleep, with a recovering body. This is a vulnerable period but also an extremely potent one, when receiving care, guidance and practical support can transform how you feel physically and emotionally, and your connection with your body and with your baby, not just at the time but also as you move forward into motherhood.

• More difficult  journeys warrant specific awareness and care

How you came into this pregnancy, into this birth, into this postpartum matters. These are not ‘separate’ events but unfurl from one another. Your journey to this point will always affect to some degree your pregnancy, birth and/or postpartum experience. I have experience supporting women & families after a long conception journeys, including loss and IVF, difficult first births and birth trauma, and sexual abuse, and can share extra tools to support you and secure the care you need from your maternity care provider.

A little bit about me and what brought me to this path

There isn’t a day I don’t wish I knew then what I know now, and had the wise, caring support of a doula, for birth & beyond.

Despite what I felt was thorough preparation (with a ‘classic’ antenatal course and weekly pregnancy yoga), my first birth 13 years ago turned out to be a very difficult and traumatic experience, swiftly followed by a ‘crash-landing’ into motherhood I really struggled to navigate for months on end, and took me years to process. This is where the seed of supporting others mothers & mothers-to-be was planted.

A magical second birth and much softer, joyful postpartum, really showed me that these important thresholds can be beautiful and much easier with the right learning (and unlearning) and support in place; which is exactly what I aim to provide for all the families I support.

After more than 10 years specialising in yoga for pregnancy, birth and postpartum, I trained with Developing Doulas in 2023 and soon achieved recognised doula status with DoulaUK in 2024.

I am fully insured, and registered/ meet the requirements of private insurance such as Carrot.

I live in Richmond, South West London, and cover areas of South West London, Central London and parts of Surrey (about 10 miles radius from Ham TW10), under the care of Kingston Hospital, West Middlesex, Chelsea & Westminster, Queen Charlotte, St George’s, St Mary’s, and more.

A native French speaker, I am also able to support you in French, and help you understand and navigate the UK maternity system and postpartum care (which can be so different from France!).