Certified Nurturing Birth Doula

Hello,I'm Emma

On this page

01Meet Emma
02My mission
03My story
04How I trained
05What I do

An Introduction

A decadeof motherhood

I’m glad you’re here. Maybe you’re pregnant, maybe your baby is already here, or maybe your children are older now. Whatever brought you, you are welcome to pause, reflect and take whatever information feels good for you.

While you are here, I’d like to introduce myself.

I’m Welsh, and Potsdam has been home for a decade. I am raising my daughters away from the country I grew up in and in my second language, so I know what it is to sit in the appointments, work out the paperwork, and get through the first weeks with a baby while my own family is a flight away.

Birth stories are told for years afterwards. I have sat in plenty of those gatherings, women who have been down the same familiar road of birth and matrescence, the becoming of a mother. How a woman is looked after, and how her baby is born, stays with her.

Doula work sits with the parts of becoming a mother that are delicate and easily passed over: the fears that arrive at three in the morning, the question you have not wanted to say out loud, the change in who you are that runs alongside the change in your body. Before a birth, it builds you up to stand in the intensity of it rather than to get around it. After, it makes room for the weeks and years in which you are still becoming a mother.

Further down is what my support looks like. If you are pregnant, I want you to go into your birth ready, with the tools to face it head on, and excited to meet your baby. If your baby is already here, I want you to have somewhere to bring the questions and the changes that come after a birth.

I began to understand how much our emotions shape the way we birth and recover.

My Mission

A resource,and a practice

Birth & Mother is a resource as much as it is a practice, and you can be informed by it although we may never meet. Clear information in English about pregnancy, birth and the weeks afterwards in Germany is harder to come by than it ought to be, and putting it somewhere you can reach it is as much a part of this as the care I give in person. Most of what I know is written out, and you can find it here:

Find Your Way. A few questions about where you are, and it points you to the parts that apply to you.
The Guides. How the maternity system runs here, from finding a midwife to what your insurance covers and what happens at each appointment.
The Journal. What I write as I go, on birth, the Wochenbett, and mothering a long way from where you started.

I hope that you find what you’re looking for.

Whatever shape the support takes, I am working towards the same thing. That you go into birth knowing what is happening, what you are being offered and what you can ask for instead. And that after it, in the Wochenbett and the years that follow, you are looked after too.

The weeks after a birth have a name here, the Wochenbett, with an idea folded into it: that a mother has been through something enormous, and that she is fed, kept warm and looked after while she recovers and learns her baby. Visitors wait. The house stays quiet. Someone else carries the day so that she does not have to. It is a lovely way to begin motherhood. I want those weeks to count for as much as the birth itself.

Emma's three daughters — Ella, Elise & Effie · Potsdam 2025

My Story

How thisstarted

In July 2025, after a really tough year, I sat on my own in front of the fire bowl and knew something had changed.

I couldn’t really explain it. I just knew I had more to give as I moved deeper into motherhood.

I didn’t know that would mean becoming a doula. I wasn’t looking for a career in care. I just knew I wanted to do something that felt meaningful again.

I joined Nurturing Birth doula training in November. By March, I was setting up Birth & Mother.

Since then I’ve discovered a much wider world around women’s health and motherhood: women’s rights, women’s health research, and the history of women’s bodies being misunderstood or under-researched.

The more I learn, the more I think about how much happens to a woman through pregnancy, birth and motherhood.

Becoming a mother isn’t something that happens once.

Yourbody changes.Yourrelationships change.Yourbeliefs change.Yoursense of self changes.

And I think that’s what I was beginning to feel that night by the fire. There was more to motherhood than I had understood.

Maybe that’s what Birth & Mother is becoming too. I’m still working it out. But I know I had more to give. I just hadn’t worked out where to put it yet.

Certified Nurturing Birth Doula

How I Trained

Training andcertification

I wanted to do this properly, and not by instinct alone. So I trained as a doula with Nurturing Birth in London, a Doula UK accredited provider, and I’m a certified Nurturing Birth doula. The training gave me language and evidence for things I had only felt my way through, and it showed me what a doula actually does on the day and in the weeks either side of it.

I’m still learning, and I expect to be for as long as I do this. I keep up with the evidence as it changes, I work alongside midwives and other doulas here, and every family I sit with teaches me something I did not know before.

The moment a baby is born, a mother is born too. Every woman deserves to feel safe in that space: in her body, in her voice, and in the choices being offered to her.

What I Do

What my supportlooks like

What I do is mother the mother. I’m the person who is there for you, who already knows the whole of your story, and who doesn’t change at the end of a shift. I work in English and in German, in person around Potsdam, and by video anywhere in Germany. Nearly all of this works as well on a call as it does in the room, so where you live decides very little about what you can have.

Before the birth
We meet while you’re pregnant and go through what you want and what you would rather avoid, what is offered as routine here and what you can ask for instead, what the day will ask of your partner and how you prepare for it together, and what to do when a decision arrives faster than you expected. Some of it is practical and some of it is quieter: meeting the fear, finding the words, learning what your own body does under pressure. Six hours together over several sessions is The Power of Preparation, which also runs live online; one two-hour prenatal session on your birth preferences is the Birth Preferences Session.
Between the appointments
You can reach me wherever you are, by message or a short call, and most women do. It is usually the small things: what a letter means, what to ask at the next appointment, how to word something you have been putting off.
On the day
I come when you call and I stay: keeping the room quiet and warm, reading what is needed, and carrying what you said you wanted, so that everything you have can go into the work of labour. That is Birth Support, for births from 2027, on call for you from 38 weeks, and the one part of this that has to be in person.
In German, where that helps
I speak German, and whether we are in the room together or on a call, I can tell you what is being said and what is being offered, so you’re not doing that work in a second language while you’re in labour.
The weeks after
This is the part of the work I love most. Meals you did not have to think about, a bath run while you sleep, feeding questions answered in your own kitchen, and the space to let everything else wait. By video, an hour at a time, that is Wochenbett Sessions 1:1; planned together before the birth, it is the 40 Day Recovery Plan; and from 2027 I can be with you in your own home, two hours at a time.
The years after
Women come to me with a second or third baby on the way, with a household to run, with the life they had planned before children, and with a birth from years ago they still think about. We meet in the same 1:1 sessions, by video, and once a month at Matrescence Connection in Potsdam. That is Becoming a mother.

In person or by videowhichever fits you, your family,and your wishes for this birth.

My code of conduct

I support, I inform, and I point you to the people who can help. I do not diagnose, treat, or carry out clinical checks, and I make no decisions on your behalf. I do not speak for you either: I help you say what you want to say, and I hold on to what you have already told me you want. What you tell me stays with me. My work sits alongside your care team and never in place of it, so when a question belongs to your midwife or doctor rather than to me I will say so, and for anything to do with your health or your baby’s health they are the people to turn to. If you are still looking for a midwife, Ammely is the national search, and near Potsdam I can help you find one.

Where to next

A whole seasonof support

Everything in one place: pregnancy and birth, the Wochenbett, becoming a mother, and how we’d work together.

See the support

Ready to Begin

Could we be a good match?

Finding a doula you feel comfortable with, and can truly trust, matters more than anything else. Whether you are preparing for birth, in the early weeks, or wondering whether doula care is right for you, I would love to hear from you.

Write to me Doula Care