About Bump Buddies

Hi I'm Louise, founder of Bump Buddies. I live in Redcar with my fiancé Damian and daughters Evie and Freya. I worked in the chemicals industry on Teesside for 15 years and after returning to work after having my eldest Evie I decided to take voluntary redundancy and look for a change in direction. This made me reassess what I wanted to do and my lack of enthusiasm for any in-depth antenatal care available when I was having Evie made me look into this area. I started researching what opportunities there were out there and I came across a little known role of a Doula. Meaning women of service, a Doula offers practical and emotional support for pregnant ladies throughout their pregnancy and during birth. So I did the necessary training and became a qualified and practicing Doula giving antenatal and birth support. Although I do not have a medical background and have not been a midwife, as a qualified Doula I have a passion for supporting expectant parents throughout their pregnancies and onto birth and parenthood. I have real life experience of antenatal care, birth support and postnatal care and have supported mums through home births, natural birth, induction, cesarean, back to back labour and even water birth.

Midwifes have a specific and important role to play during pregnancy and birth, antenatal classes are an added part of that role yet are often under resourced and unable to meet the in-depth needs of expectant parents. During my experiences as a Doula I realised that there was a lack of alternative antenatal support so the idea of Bump Buddies Antenatal was, excuse the pun, 'born'. After offering the Doula service, I felt there was a huge gap in the market for in depth antenatal care so the Bump Buddies Antenatal programme has been inspired and developed by my experiences and real pregnancies to be tailored to meet individual needs.

I am studying with the University of Bedfordshire to 'formalise' my knowledge and experience to fulfill my mission to deliver affordable, valuable and fun antenatal care for parents-to-be. My style of teaching is relaxed and informal and I want to get to know you, your hopes and anxieties so that I can give practical and proactive support that will make a difference to your experiences.

I also sit on the James Cook University Hospital's maternity forum so I can keep up to date with new birthing practices and share my knowledge from an expectant parent's point of view to help shape maternity services in Teesside.

Visit the contacts page to follow Bump Buddies on Twitter and Facebook, I have a growing community of Bump Buddies friends or if you want a more personal insight into the Bump Buddies service then don't hesitate to get in touch direct.

Thanks for visiting the Bump Buddies Antenatal site and hopefully you can benefit from our services.

Louise x