Parent Coaching and Peer Support for Families

Pregnancy Support and Antenatal Sessions

Finding the practicalities of running your house a struggle while pregnant? Overwhelmed with getting together what you need for your baby? A pregnancy peer supporter can help.

Would you like support with making a birth or postnatal plan? Book a “Power Hour” this personalised antenatal session focuses on what matters to you.

Pregnancy peer support is available in Portsmouth and in Havant and Waterlooville and the surrounding villages (if you’re not sure if that includes where you are please message and ask). It is bookable in 2+ hour sessions and cost £40 for each two hours.

Antenatal Power Hour sessions are available everywhere via video call and are £40

Postnatal Family Support

Whether you’re a first-time parent or you’ve a whole house full of small people the first few weeks of a new baby’s life can be really full on.
Would you like some practical and emotional support in your home focused on what’s most helpful to you?

My focus with postnatal support is to really see and listen to you. To understand what matters to you and then support you to make this postnatal time manageable and full of little moments of joy to remember.

You don’t have to treasure every moment, some moments like the ones when your baby’s nappy doesn’t contain the amazing explosive newborn poo and everyone has to have an impromptu bath can’t be treasured at the time even if they can be laughed at in the years to come.
But you also don’t have to drag yourself from day to day trying to do everything the way you planned and always feeling like you’ve not quite caught up on anything, sleep, time with your older children, the washing up. Hand over some of the practical tasks to me as a postnatal peer supporter and then let me make you a cup of tea and listen while you unload all the moments you haven’t treasured so far. I might only have the consolation that it’s all normal and you’re doing a great job to offer or I might have a tip or two that may make things easier for you but you will definitely feel heard and appreciated and that can make a big difference in how easy it is to cope.

Baby feeding support

Feeding your baby can be a source of stress for many new parents and I am trained and knowledgeable to support your feeding choices. This can be part of a wider package of postnatal support or it can be booked as a specific service. It’s available and suitable regardless of how you are feeding your baby.

Postnatal doula and baby feeding support are available in Portsmouth and in Havant, Waterlooville and the surrounding villages. Please feel free to ask if you’re not sure whether that includes where you live.

Postnatal support can be booked in 2 hour blocks and costs £40 for 2 hours.

Emotional Coaching and Trauma Informed Listening

Support services for when things go wrong and you feel stuck and would like someone to listen and understand and help you move into feeling more positive in the future.

Do you feel like your thoughts and feelings are not completely in your control? You can see that there are lots of things to be happy about and grateful for but somehow your brain just keeps returning to sad or scary memories from your pregnancy, birth or postnatal experiences? Or you can’t stop feeling anxious or heavy or worried even when you’re not always sure why? Do you avoid thinking about things that happened to you to an extent that you avoid people and places that remind you of what happened?

This may be part of a very normal response to having a traumatic experience. When something happens to us that makes us feel unsafe or out of control sometimes our brain keeps that memory in our short-term memory store and creates a neural pathway from that memory to our amygdala (the part of our brain responsible for our flight or flight response) so that when anything reminds us of that memory the fight or flight response can be triggered and we can act and feel as if we are under threat again now.
These feelings and behaviours are trauma symptoms. Sometimes people talk about having PTSD after traumatic births but not everyone has the number or level of responses that would be necessary for a PTSD diagnosis, this doesn’t mean they are not really struggling with their trauma symptoms.
If you have a PTSD diagnosis or any other mental health-related diagnosis then you should have access to appropriate treatment through your local NHS mental health service (eg EMDR which can be very effective for PTSD). If you are otherwise healthy and not eligible for treatment but are struggling with how a traumatic event that was part of your pregnancy, birth or postnatal experience is still affecting you now you don’t have to struggle on or pull yourself together. You may find that a trauma-informed listening session or using the TBR Three Step Rewind process will help you to process your memories and find a way to move forward and be able to enjoy more of the joyful moments of parenting and life.

How do these support services help?

The processes we follow in the trauma-informed listening session and in the TBR Three Step-Rewind are based on the understanding that when a traumatic event occurs your brain goes into the self-protective fight or flight mode and the memories of that event are not filed in the same way as regular memories but are still connected to the fight or flight function in your brain. So remembering the traumatic event and the events around the same time can set off trauma responses in the same way the event did.
We can’t go back and change the past but we can take some agency in our present and imagine feeling better in the future. Using your imagination to create new thoughts and feelings about the day-to-day things you are struggling with allows you to begin to build new positive associations and neural pathways. The TBR Three-Step-Rewind also allows you to access your memories of the thing that happened to you while in a very relaxed state and so not setting off your flight or flight response. This allows your brain to process and file the memories of the thing that happened to you in your long term memory and break the connection between the memory and the fight or flight reactions.
Basically, imagining yourself feeling and doing something has the same effect on your brain as feeling and doing that thing would. This makes it easier to do that and feel like that in future.

It’s important to note this will help with the trauma symptoms you’re experiencing but they will not cure any mental illness, that will require proper medical support. These sessions may help you have the confidence to reach out for that mental health support if you need to.

TBR Three-Step-Rewind Support costs £150 for three sessions and email support before and after.

Holistic Sleep Coaching

Support for when sleep is the thing that’s making you feel stressed.

Stress about sleep can be a major source of struggle when it comes to enjoying being a parent. Support with working out what works for you and your family can turn this around. As a holistic sleep coach, I can support you to look at sleep in the context of your whole family life and find all the things that can work together to help you all feel more rested and less stressed.

Sometimes it can feel that there are only two options for sleep support. Either you will be told sleep is just hard with a baby or toddler you have to just live with that or that the only way you can ever get any sleep is if you just let your baby or child cry it out and they will never learn to sleep if you don’t.

Holistic sleep coaching is here to span that gap. To let you know that if you’re perfectly happy you don’t have to change anything. But neither do you have to use a cry it out technique to get more sleep. There are many other changes you can make that can impact how much sleep you’re getting. Holistic sleep coaches are here to support all levels of need for support with sleep in a way that’s respectful and kind to the whole family.

Think sleep coaching might be what you need please contact me for a chat

Sleep Coaching is best suited for infants over 18 months and costs £250 for four weeks support including sleep diary support, initial consultation, sleep plan creation, text and email support as you implement the plan and 3 support chats one at the end of each of the remaining weeks. Available anywhere. Initial consultation in Portsmouth, Havant and Waterlooville and the surrounding villages in person in your home, or anywhere else via video call.

Family Sleep Power Hour – available anywhere via video call. Fill out a sleep diary and then have an hour’s chat about the quick wins that may help you feel more positive and confident about sleep. £40