“Hi! I’m Sarah, a mum of three from Ickenham in North-West London. As well as being a qualified primary school teacher, I am the owner of the Blooming Wonderful Baby Hub. I teach online and in-person hypnobirthing and birth preparation classes, baby massage and baby yoga courses, and facilitate weaning and potty training workshops. I also organise community events for pregnant and new babies families in my local area.
Back in September I celebrated my two-year anniversary of becoming an instructor with The Calm Birth School. If you’d have asked me in early 2022 what I’d be doing in 2.5 years time, I can honestly say that running a small business whilst teaching and running around after 3 kids, would definitely not have even been on my radar! Sometimes though I still can’t believe that I’m lucky enough to be doing what I do.
I discovered The Calm Birth School when I was pregnant with my third baby. I’d had quite a stressful pregnancy due to illness and decided to give hypnobirthing a try. My friend had recently completed her training and when I approached her about the possibility of doing a course she immediately said yes and asked if I’d like to be her case-study.
I completed the course over a couple afternoons, and soon got to work practicing the tools I’d learnt. Hypnobirthing made a massive difference to my pregnancy. My mental health and wellbeing improved massively and I started to actually look forward to the birth. I practised diligently, and felt really confident about my birth.
As my due date approached, due to a plethora of different reasons, I made an informed decision to be induced. After a long and frustrating induction (caused primarily due to lack of beds and shortage of staff), I finally went into active labour and utilised every single tool I’d learnt through my hypnobirthing course, and drew on all the positive affirmations, self-belief and confidence I’d developed. I ended up having an incredible birth that looked nothing like the one I’d envisaged – but it was perfect and I felt so proud.
Once my baby was born, I raved about hypnobirthing to anyone who’d sit still long enough to listen. Until one day I thought, I could get paid to be doing this! I followed TCBS on Facebook, and one day saw an ad popup advertising Liz’s Hypnobirthing Instructor training course. The same day I received an email from TCBS also advertising the course. I thought nothing of it until the post appeared again on my feed a few days later. I felt like the universe was trying to tell me something (and teaching me an early lesson about the value of having a variety of marketing strategies!)
I got in touch with Liz and arranged a discovery call. The course sounded fab, she seemed lovely, and I felt really excited about trying something new.
The course itself was great. The online aspects were perfect for fitting around my young family, and being on mat leave meant that I had (some) headspace to focus on a new project without the distractions of other work. I actually really enjoyed getting stuck into the course materials and felt like I learnt so much about pregnancy and birth, despite having done it 3 times! Eventually our in-person training weekend rolled around. It absolutely flew by and it was lovely to meet a range of fabulous women from all types of backgrounds with one mission: to help make birth better.
After the weekend, I began arranging my case-study. My sister was 7 months pregnant at the time, so her and her partner were the perfect candidates. I spent a few days compiling my course materials. TCBS provided the content and supporting materials, but it was up to me how the information was delivered. I loved this flexibility, and in true teacher-style, prepped helpful powerpoints, planned practical, engaging, interactive activities, and put together helpful handouts. I delivered my very first course over 4 evenings, and absolutely loved it. It gave me such a buzz being able to help them by sharing information and seeing and hearing them become more confident about the birth before my eyes as the sessions progressed.They had an incredible birth experience which they both very much attributed to hypnobirthing, which gave me a huge boost and helped me to start trying to tackle the old imposter syndrome!
Once I completed my training, I became an official hypnobirthing instructor. I started planning dates for my first group, offered free taster classes and set up my social media (I was an Instagram novice so this was a massive learning curve).
In the first few months, I printed leaflets, attempted to advertise classes on Facebook, looked at venues and started trying to spread the hypnobirthing word. As I was still on mat leave I chatted to everyone who’d listen about hypnobirthing. It was a long, slow process. I quickly learnt that halls are expensive, that there are A LOT of long-established antenatal classes out there, and although hypnobirthing is very much becoming more and more ‘mainstream’ it is still fairly misunderstood by lots of birthing people.
I was still enjoying maternity leave. After struggling to find a baby massage class very local to me to go to with my son, I decided to do something about it. Shortly after, I decided to train to become a baby massage teacher. I trained with the lovely Crystal from Connected Babies and became an IAIM instructor. I set up small, weekly classes run from home which I absolutely loved (and still do!)
I continued trying to promote my hypnobirthing classes but was struggling to fill my groups. However, after chatting to Liz and some of the other instructors in the TCBS Instructor Facebook group,I began to adapt my offering and soon had a flurry of booking for in-person and online 1:1 classes. I switched my free taster sessions to monthly free online taster sessions, which helped to spread the word about my classes, whilst keeping costs down.
In March 2023 I returned to teaching in school 2.5 days a week. I was nervous about what this would mean for my business, but I liked the balance it brought. I was able to manage my time around my kids, and my little business gave me the flexibility (and some income!) to be able to do this.
Once I’d settled into my working week, I decided to use my Friday afternoons ‘off’ to do some networking. Over the course of 2 or 3 months I met for coffee with various different local birth and baby business owners. This proved to be invaluable in terms of next steps for my business. Making connections and being able to refer my clients to people I knew (and vice versa) was great. Through these Friday meet-ups I have connected with local pregnancy and post-natal massage therapists, doulas, the Chair of our local Maternity Voices Partnership, photographers, sleep coaches,pregnancy yoga instructors, a midwife and more. I recently set up a Whatsapp group for us all, alongside some other baby business owners and we now meet for regular social events to network, chat and support each other.
In the meantime I decided to expand my business even further. Following feedback from my classes, I trained to be a Starting Solids facilitator, and several months later a Toddler-led Toilet Training Facilitator. My courses have started to feed into one another, with my hypnobirthing mums coming back for baby massage, and starting solids. I’ve recently added baby yoga to my offerings so lots of them stick around even longer, which is lovely.
This year I’ve found myself collaborating with other business owners, which I’ve really enjoyed. I met up with a midwife at my local hospital who teaches private antenatal classes. We chatted regularly about the best ways to try to tap into the pregnancy market in our area and soon put our heads together to think about what sort of things we could work on together. Off the back of this, we organised our first free community event, a Walk and Talk for pregnant and new parents. We have now run 8 or 9 of these meet-ups, some of which have been attended by more than 30 new parents, and it has been a lovely way to connect with new clients, meet people and give something back to the community. Since then I’ve also worked with a pregnancy yoga teacher to offer birth preparation classes, and another baby massage teacher to run baby massage events specifically for new dads. Word of mouth is so important in the birth and baby world, and these events have definitely helped to get people talking about me and what I do. Liz talks often about the ‘know/like/trust’ factor and I’ve seen for myself this year just how important that is – and just how beneficial it can be.
I’ve got lots of plans for other exciting projects for the new year, and although I’m very much still learning as I go, I can’t wait to find out what’s in store for my little business in 2025. Bring it on, I say!”
Check out Sarah’s website here or her Facebook page here
If you want to know more about training to teach hypnobirthing take a look here
