Nicola CarterAmbassador Co-OrdinatorNicola is a Birth and Postnatal Doula as well as being a Fertility Coach, Hypnobirthing Teacher, MBSR Practitioner and Placenta Remedies Specialist.
Nicola experienced a difficult journey to start a family and found herself suddenly thrown in to a world where she needed to understand much more about fertility, birth and postnatal recovery. As she worked to educate herself in these areas, she found herself unwilling to accept the standard pathways being offered to her by Healthcare Professionals. Nicola embraced self advocacy and made it her mission to question, challenge and suggest her own alternatives. It took approximately five years for Nicola to successfully start a family and probably another three years for her to recover from the trauma of that journey. Whilst that was a hard experience Nicola is grateful for it; it was what ignited the fire in her to support other women who are struggling with similar issues. The cornerstone of Nicola’s work focuses on ensuring that people on a journey to parenthood have access to a range of information that is evidence based and non-biased, so that they can confidently make informed decisions. Ensuring that people are in control of their journey and that it is not ‘done to them’ is a really effective way in which to support and even improve maternal mental health. Nicola is the founder of a not-for-profit organisation called PND Mummies CIC. PND Mummies provides an online community to support people with perinatal mental illness. Nicola really believes in the practice of mindfulness. She places great importance on understanding the mind/body connection and recognises that the majority of the population live in a ‘stress’ state, which is unhelpful for conception, pregnancy and motherhood. For this reason, Nicola chooses to incorporate mindfulness, breathwork, meditation and energy awareness in to most of the work she does. Nicola is currently training to become a Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist with a view to specialising in Infertility Emotional Support, Birth Anxiety and Birth Trauma. |