Hello,

Firstly, thank you — genuinely, from the bottom of my heart — for taking the time to visit us here at WOVE.

This has been a project more than a decade in the making, and I am so pleased to finally welcome you here.

My name is Nicola. I'm the founder of WOVE, a teacher, birth and postnatal doula, student midwife and, most importantly in the story of WOVE, a mother of three.

I've found it surprisingly difficult to tell the story behind this place. In fact, I've avoided it. A large part of me hoped WOVE could simply stand on its own, without putting me at the centre of it.

But I've realised that its backstory matters.

Care around pregnancy, birth and motherhood isn't a new idea. It is as old as humanity itself. We now have an extraordinary wealth of medical knowledge and research, but we also have generations of knowledge passed between the women and people who have cared for mothers before us.

And yet, somewhere along the way, I think we've lost part of the conversation.

We have become very good at looking at birth through a medical lens — and thank God for modern maternity care when it is needed — but becoming a mother is not solely a medical event.

A woman doesn't give birth and simply return to her previous, singular state. Something has changed physically, emotionally, relationally and, I believe, spiritually.

We've known this for generations. So why do we speak about it so little?

Why isn't matrescence understood as readily as adolescence or menopause? Why do we prepare so intensely for the birth of a baby, but often so little for the birth of a mother?

That is the space WOVE sits within.

A place where current research, evidence-informed maternity education and generations of knowledge about birth and motherhood can sit alongside one another. A place where we can approach motherhood humanly — not as something to recover from as quickly as possible, but as a profound transition deserving time, care and recognition.

And yes, I believe there is something deeply spiritual about it too.

Birth and motherhood change you. They ask things of you. They reveal things about you. And I wonder whether our relentless pursuit of “getting back to ourselves” sometimes prevents us from discovering the woman who is actually emerging.

You are not required to become exactly who you were before.

You are becoming.

And for me, as a Christian, that carries another truth: you are a mother in body and spirit, known and loved by God.

Now, that was already longer than I intended — and if you've read this far, well, flipping done.

But there is one more part of the story.

When my first child was born thirteen years ago, I fell completely in love with maternity.

It was a high-risk pregnancy with complications, so I spent much of my third trimester in and out of hospital. And I interviewed the midwives. Constantly.

I must have driven them mad.

“She's back. An hour of monitoring and another 5,000 questions about my working day.”

Until then, I'd never imagined myself pursuing a career in maternity care. I worked in the City and, as far as I knew, that was where I was supposed to be.

But I loved maternity. I loved the wards. I loved listening to the midwives. I wanted to understand all of it.

I'd love to tell you that I immediately recognised my calling, went off to university and became a midwife.

Clearly, given that I introduced myself as a student midwife, that isn't what happened.

Instead, I spent the next thirteen years finding very sensible reasons not to do the thing I couldn't stop being drawn towards.

Even after giving my life to God, the excuses continued.

“It isn't enough money.”
“I need to stick with my career.”
“I can't make the clinical hours work.”
“This isn't the right time.”

Eventually I had to acknowledge something rather uncomfortable: the pain of continually living outside what I felt called to do had become greater than the inconvenience of answering the call.

If you're Christian and you've ever read about the Israelites wandering around the wilderness for forty years and thought, “Guys. Seriously? The Promised Land is RIGHT THERE...”

Well.

Apparently I had been conducting my own, slightly shorter wilderness tour.

It turns out it's much easier to recognise somebody else's wandering than your own.

Looking back, though, I'm grateful for what those years gave me. I arrive here with three experiences of becoming a mother, years of supporting women and families, teaching experience, doula work, study, mistakes, questions, faith and a great deal more lived experience to dedicate to WOVE than I had thirteen years ago.

So, here we are.

Here it is.

WOVE isn't intended to put me at its centre. It exists to serve women and families, and ultimately I hope it points beyond me to the God who called me here in the first place.

Whether this is your first baby, your second, your seventh, or motherhood looks different from anything you expected, I hope you find something here that helps you feel informed, held and supported as you become the mother you are becoming.

Thank you for being here.

God bless you,

Nicola
Founder, WOVE