New Baby - New Business - A well fit mumma's tale!

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How it began

I started doing a little bit of work at treat-norwich in 2016 while pregnant with my little boy. I met Rebecca, who runs the clinic, when she treated me for nausea during my first trimester. I thought Rebecca’s acupuncture would help and it did, enormously!

She had just opened Treat and was looking for a physiotherapist with a special interest in women’s health and paediatrics to join the team. At the time I was working independently as a physiotherapist and pregnancy yoga teacher alongside my paediatric physiotherapy role at a children’s hospice, so I was pretty busy. My baby, Sonny Owen, came along in December 2016 and once he was born I realised I wanted to take complete control of my career. I also knew I wanted to work with mums and babies and integrate aspects of fitness, yoga and physiotherapy into helping mums both pre and postnatally.

I taught pregnancy yoga all the way through my pregnancy and loved meeting other mums at the same stage. Pregnancy yoga teaches you to move in ways that helps to keep you physically and mentally balanced. It also involves beautiful, feminine movements that help you to connect with your inner strength and breath. I loved taking my ladies on a journey to deep relaxation and to a place where they could bond deeply with their babies.

My birth experience was amazing. I used hypnobirthing and was lucky enough to have the birth attended by the extraordinary Molly the Midwife, who also teaches workshops at Treat. So I was very excited about what a positive birth could be and knew how pregnancy yoga and hypnobirthing had helped me to have an enjoyable pregnancy and birth. When I was at home with Sonny for the first six months of my maternity leave, I spent time thinking about how I could share the knowledge I had accumulated through my own pre and postnatal experience.

An idea is born

During this period, however, I met many mums who had not had such a positive birth experience. I listened to their stories and many had experienced traumatic births and many were having a hard time getting back to normal, pre-pregnancy, levels of fitness and functioning. I became increasingly confident that I could share my experiences of moving in ways to encourage a positive birth and recover function and so Wellfit Mumma was born (the name was my partner Adam’s idea, he’s very keen that everyone knows this). The concept for Wellfit Mumma came relatively easily, as I knew what I was providing already was massively useful to my ladies, but I actually set up the website on a bit of a whim. I was able to design the site whilst spending hours at home feeding and caring for a very small baby. It might not seem like it but you can get a lot done in those first few months, it gets tougher when you’re little one gets mobile!

Setting up a business whilst having a very small child has been a bit of a roller coaster. I went back to do a few classes at 6 months postnatal which I loved as it gave me a little break. At about 9 months postnatal patients started rolling in and my work hours went up significantly with the demand. As my little one has got older and more mobile juggling work, childcare and actually getting some sleep myself has become more demanding. I had wanted to manage all the childcare between myself and my partner , but this was proving impossible and I was spending all my evenings doing admin ( so wasn’t really able to get to sleep early , which has become necessary to survive a working mummy life!) plus defeated the purpose of being able to run my own business and dictate my own hours. It’s tricky when you run your own business there is no end to what you could be doing! It was also taking it’s toll on my partner and I neither of us felt like we had any of our own time at all.

So, now I have managed to instill a degree of discipline with my work hours, we have a childminder one day and have grandparents another plus daddy covers lots of events and evening care whilst I’m out teaching or doing workshops. I have plenty of Mummy and Sonny time, which I adore and I’m incredibly lucky to be doing a job that I completely love . It is however, not “the easy route’ to take, it is probably a zillion times harder and in some ways way more work than when I worked in the hospital.

The admin and organisation of courses takes time, correspondence with clients is time consuming and the amount of work and events your could attend running a mum and baby business is endless ! Saying all that I wouldn’t change it for the world, the sense of empowerment is enormous and if you have a passion for creating , sharing your love, story and knowledge then yes running your own business could be for you!

Rosie runs a comprehensive pathway for mums and babies at treat including Mummy MOT.

To book a classes or buy a gift voucher please call treat's Reception Team: 01603 514195 or [email protected]