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Private Midwife Services in London
Personalised antenatal, birth and postnatal care with Julia Melinek, an experienced registered private midwife. Beautiful Birth Club offers safe, evidence based and holistic private midwifery care in the comfort of your own home across London, Berkshire, Hertfordshire, Surrey and Buckinghamshire. From a single antenatal or postnatal appointment or feeding support to full continuity of care packages, your care can be tailored around you, your pregnancy and your choices.
Services include private antenatal care, home birth support, support in hospital, postnatal and breastfeeding support, birth preparation and education, hypnobirthing, and support for birth trauma and tokophobia.
Private Antenatal & Pre-conception Care
Your care begins with getting to know you. Following an initial meet and greet, I can provide personalised antenatal care from early pregnancy onwards, with appointments usually taking place in the comfort of your home and lasting between 1.5-2.5 hours.
As your registered midwife, I provide the clinical antenatal checks you would expect, while giving you considerably more time to ask questions, explore your choices and prepare for birth.
✓ Antenatal care can include:
✓ Maternal and fetal wellbeing checks
✓ Blood pressure and urine testing
✓ Listening to your baby's heartbeat
✓ Monitoring baby's growth
✓ Blood tests, where appropriate, in your home
✓ Referral or signposting for NHS or private scans, screening and specialist care when required
✓ Birth planning and evidence-based discussion of your options
✓ Hypnobirthing, breathing, vocalising and relaxation techniques
✓ Colostrum harvesting preparation
✓ Discussions around perineal massage and care
✓ Discussions around complementary therapies
✓ Emotional support and time to discuss any worries and concerns
✓ Liaison with your NHS maternity team, obstetricians or other healthcare professionals where needed
✓ Support by phone / message between appointments
You can then book a single appointment, an antenatal package or completely bespoke care depending on what you need. I am very happy to work alongside your NHS maternity care rather than replace it if that is your preference.
Home Birth and Hospital Birth Support
I support women choosing to give birth at home as well as women planning to birth in hospital. The care I provide differs depending on where you choose to give birth.
For planned home births, I provide clinical midwifery care throughout labour & birth, with the safety and wellbeing of you and your baby always at the centre of my practice.
Home birth care includes:
✓ A second registered midwife for the birth, included within your package fee
✓ Regular monitoring and clinical assessment of you and your baby throughout labour
✓ Equipment and medications appropriate to planned home birth including emergency newborn resuscitation equipment
✓ Support for water birth if appropriate
✓ Ongoing assessment of whether home remains the safest place to give birth and clear planning for transfer to hospital should this become necessary.
✓ Full holistic care as appropriate, including hypnobirthing support, active birth movement, massage, affirmations
✓ Support for your partner including guidance how they can best support you.
✓ Entonox (gas and air) if required
Although most planned home births do not involve an emergency, safety is always my priority. As registered midwives, we are trained to recognise and respond to obstetric emergencies and to arrange timely transfer to hospital when additional or specialist care is needed. If a transfer takes place during active labour, I will accompany you into hospital and continue to provide non-clinical support and to advocate for your wishes with the multidisciplinary hospital team.
For births planned in hospital, my role is different. I can accompany you as your private midwife and provide continuous emotional, practical and advocacy support, but I do not provide clinical midwifery care within the hospital. Clinical responsibility remains with the hospital maternity department.
My birth care is always provided as part of a continuity of care package, because I truly believe personalised birth support begins long before labour, with time to get to know you, to understand your preferences and to build a relationship of trust, warmth, laughter and lots of cups of tea!
But birth is about so much more than clinical care. I'll be there to help create a calm, private and oxytocin-rich birth space - whether that means hypnobirthing, vocalising and breathing techniques, massage, soft lighting and music, protecting your birthing zone or simply knowing when to quietly step back and let you birth. And if plans change, as birth sometimes has a habit of doing, I'll adapt with you. Home or hospital, physiological birth or intervention, low risk or 'high risk', my aim is always the same - for you to feel safe, heard, cared for and supported. I will stay by your side until you are settled, with your baby safely in your arms.
Private Postnatal and Feeding Support
The early days and weeks with a newborn can be wonderful, emotional, exhausting and sometimes overwhelming. My postnatal care gives you unhurried support in the comfort of your own home, with time to care for you as well as your baby while you recover, get to know each other and grow in confidence.
Postnatal care can include:
✓ Maternal postnatal wellbeing and recovery checks
✓ Newborn wellbeing and top-to-toe checks
✓ Baby weight monitoring
✓ Breastfeeding and infant feeding support
✓ Newborn blood spot screening at home
✓ Support with newborn care, bathing, and those many early questions
✓Referral to appropriate specialists, including tongue-tie assessment where needed
✓ Liaison with local maternity services for NIPE (Newborn and Infant Physical Examination) and newborn hearing screening
✓ Emotional wellbeing and mental health assessment and support, with referral or signposting where appropriate
✓ Support by phone / message between visits
Visits are usually more frequent during the first few days and then become more spaced as you and your baby settle in and your confidence grows. Appointments take place in your own home and usually last 1 - 2.5 hours. Postnatal care will usually continue for 2 - 4 weeks , depending on your package and support you need, before care transitions to your health visiting team.
There is no expectation that you should instinctively know how to do all of this simply because you've had a baby. Both you and baby are learning! Whether you need hands-on feeding support, reassurance about your baby's weight, help making sense of newborn behaviour, or simply someone experienced beside you to cheerlead and say, 'yes, this is normal!', I'll be there to support you as you find your own way into life with your baby.
Hypnobirthing, Trauma and Tokophobia Support
Pregnancy and birth can bring up powerful emotions. Whether you're looking forward to birth or feeling anxious following a previous difficult experience, I offer personalised hypnobirthing and birth preparation to help you feel calm, empowered and confident.
Oxytocin, the 'love hormone' that surges during lovemaking, breast feeding and bonding, also plays a central role in physiological labour. Stress hormones such as adrenaline can interfere with the normal hormonal processes of birth. My approach is influenced by the obstetrician Michel Odent, a pioneer of physiological and water birth, who emphasised the importance of privacy, reduced stimulation and allowing the neocortex - the thinking part of the brain - to quieten during labour, creating an environment that supports the natural physiology of labour.
Hypnobirthing and holistic birth preparation can be useful for all types of birth. Practices may include:
✓ Breathing, relaxation and visualisation techniques
✓ The Beautiful Birth Club Ow to Wow™ method
✓ Positive affirmations and birth partner support
✓ Massage, movement and vocalisation
✓ Creating a calm birth environment using soft light, sound & scent
✓ Understanding the physiology of labour and your birth choices
These practices may be helpful in all types of birth and can also be very effective when a birth plan takes an unexpected turn.
I also support women experiencing tokophobia (a severe fear of childbirth), birth anxiety or distress following a previous traumatic birth. I am certified in the Three Step Rewind process and through deep relaxation and neurolinguistic programming can support you to reframe distressing thought patterns to develop a more positive and empowering perspective. I can also offer referral or signposting for specialist care where appropriate.
