Hello, I'm Alex
Nurse, mother, doula
I'm a doula in Montpellier, and I work in English and French.
I have two children, I climb, I sew not always perfectly but enthusiastically, and I travel to countries most people skip. My second baby was born here, and my first was born in London, which is where this all started.
Before this
I was a nurse for over ten years: A&E, intensive care, a homelessness service in London, some humanitarian work. There's always plenty to do on a ward. Lines, obs, drugs, charts, and in the emergency department and intensive care it barely stops. But the work was never the whole job. In A&E you meet people on the worst day of their lives, often frightened and often not at their best, and how you speak to someone in that state matters as much as anything you do to them. That's the part I carried into this.
The medical training left me something else too: I want to know what the evidence says. Not what's fashionable, not what someone's aunt swears by. When I tell you continuous support reduces caesarean rates, I can show you the Cochrane review it comes from. And when the evidence is thin or contested, I'll tell you that as well.
I feel incredibly lucky to have had Alex by my side throughout my pregnancy and postpartum journey, and I couldn’t recommend her more.
As a first time mum, it’s so easy to feel overwhelmed by the amount of information, advice, and often conflicting opinions. Alex helped me trust my own instincts and find the solutions that were right for both my baby and me, without ever being judgmental or pushing a particular approach.
She was always available, reassuring, and full of advice. I always felt listened to, understood, and cared for.
I’m deeply grateful for everything she did for us, and I recommend her to any expecting or new parent.
Raph B.
Why I do this
My first birth was long, and it went badly. I'd prepared, the staff were good, it simply went the way it went. By the end of it, I was being taken to theatre, and I was told my baby would stay behind.
My doula advocated for me. She knew it was possible to take my baby to theatre; she'd seen it done, and she gave a reason, calmly, until it happened differently. I went into theatre with my daughter on my chest. She fed. We stayed skin to skin for an hour and a half while I was stitched.
That's the whole reason I do this. Not because my birth was hard, plenty are.
Because one person in the room was paying attention to me, not to the chart.
It changed what I carried out of that room.
Montpellier, and what was missing
My second baby was born here. Induced again, but no epidural this time. I felt every bit of it, and I'd do it again. Afterwards I could finally close the book on the first one, I'd spent two years quietly disappointed by it and hadn't realised how much I was carrying until it lifted.
What I didn't find here was everything that comes after. In London I'd met a group of women at antenatal classes above a pub in East Dulwich, which is not where you expect to make the friends of your life. We laughed far more than we cried, though we did plenty of both. Most of us have had second babies since and we still keep in touch. In Montpellier I had the birth I wanted and nobody to tell about it at 3am.
So I built the thing that was missing. A teapot on the table, my living room, seven or eight people who are all somewhere in the same three months of their lives.
One more thing
Hiring a doula doesn't mean you're not coping.
Becoming a mother isn't an event you get through and recover from. It's a transformation, there's a word for it, matrescence, and it deserves to be as well known as adolescence. You change. Your body, your relationships, your sense of who you are and what you're for. That process takes months, not days, and it happens whether the birth was easy or hard.
Nobody should go through a change that size unaccompanied. That's the whole job.
TRAINING
Doula 360 - Envol & Matrescence
One of only three schools recognised by the Association des Doulas de France · 9-month in-person programme · Montpellier