Why I do this work
My journey to midwifery
My journey into midwifery started with my mother.
She was a nurse, and I always admired the passion and pride she had for her work. When she was diagnosed with cancer, I watched her meet illness with extraordinary courage and strength. Through her, I saw something I would come to recognise again and again in the women I cared for: the quiet, gentle power of women. Soft when it needs to be, strong as steel when it has to be, and loud when it matters.
I knew I wanted to help others in the way that she did.
A bereavement in my late teens deepened this calling. I became fascinated by the liminal spaces we move through in life — those thresholds between one chapter and another, between life and death. And I was drawn particularly to birth: the rawness, the strength, the beauty, and the profound transformation it holds.
I knew my place was to be with women as they navigated these thresholds.
I trained as a midwife and began my career in the NHS, fascinated by physiology and by the extraordinary things the female body is capable of. But when I witnessed my first birth as a student midwife, it was nothing like the births I had imagined.
It was busy, clinical and undignified. A woman was crying out in distress, and her baby was taken from her and rushed away.
I told myself perhaps it was a one-off. But as my experience grew, I realised that this kind of experience was not as uncommon as it should be.
Finding my way as a midwife
Over eight years working in the NHS, I cared for women across the whole spectrum of maternity care — from antenatal and postnatal care to birth centre, home birth and delivery suite. I spent two years working within a continuity model, caring for women who had experienced a previous caesarean birth, and saw first-hand the difference that genuine continuity and relationship can make.
I learned from incredible midwives, obstetricians, anaesthetists and neonatal teams. I witnessed extraordinary medical care, including moments when intervention quite literally saved lives.
But the most important lessons came from the women themselves.
From sitting quietly in the corner of a room for hours, watching and waiting. From leaning in to listen to a baby's heartbeat, wiping sweat from a forehead, moving a strand of hair gently behind an ear, offering a sip of water or whispering a few words of encouragement.
And sometimes, from doing nothing at all.
From sitting on my hands and allowing a woman's body and baby to work together, without unnecessarily interfering with the process.
Those first moments after birth are pure magic. — a mother meeting her baby for the first time, carefully discovering their tiny fingers and toes, looking at their face, breathing in that unmistakable newborn smell.
There is something sacred about those moments.
And I found myself wanting to protect them.
When things no longer felt right
As my experience grew, so did my awareness of the ways in which birth can become medicalised and how easily fear can enter the room.
I saw women begin pregnancy believing in themselves, only to gradually become fearful of their bodies and uncertain about their ability to birth. I saw plans change, sometimes necessarily and sometimes through a cascade of interventions that left women feeling disconnected from the experience they had hoped for.
I became increasingly uncomfortable with the idea that birth should be something that happens to a woman, rather than something that she is supported to actively participate in.
Of course, medical care has an essential and sometimes lifesaving place in maternity care. I have enormous respect for the skilled professionals who provide it, and I am deeply grateful that it is there when it is needed.
But I also believe that physiological birth deserves to be understood, respected and protected.
A woman giving birth should feel safe. She should feel heard. She should feel informed and supported. And she should have the space to surrender to the process, knowing that someone is there to recognise when she or her baby needs something more.
My own journey
My professional journey has also mirrored my personal one.
For many years I struggled with anxiety, low self-esteem and a deep feeling that I wasn't enough. Like so many women, I looked outside myself for validation and used unhealthy ways of coping with difficult emotions.
Over the last five years, I have been on a profound journey of self-development, spirituality and soul-searching. I travelled to Thailand to study yoga, explored my spirituality and spent time in therapy. Slowly, I began to develop something I had been missing for much of my life: a deep relationship of trust and peace with myself.
And as I changed, the way I saw midwifery changed too.
I could no longer separate myself from what I was witnessing within the maternity system. The cognitive dissonance became too loud.
In May 2026, I made the difficult decision to leave the NHS.
I didn't know exactly what my future would look like. I questioned whether I had made the right decision and wondered if perhaps I should leave birth work altogether.
Then life took another unexpected turn.
Motherhood, loss and finding my way back
I became pregnant unexpectedly.
Pregnancy gave me the opportunity to experience maternity care from the other side. I found myself asking questions I had encouraged so many women to ask: How do I want to be cared for? What do I want my birth to look like? What kind of relationship do I want with the people supporting me?
And I realised, with certainty, that the kind of care I was looking for could not be found solely within the NHS.
Devastatingly, my pregnancy ended in miscarriage.
I struggled with the loss. Like many women, I found that society seemed to expect me to simply move on. But my baby had existed. My baby mattered. And my grief needed to be honoured.
Then, serendipitously, I met a beautiful birth keeper who listened to me. She honoured the death of my baby and held space for my grief, giving me the most beautiful ceremony.
I will never forget the gift she gave me.
It reignited something within me.
It reminded me why I became a midwife in the first place — and, perhaps more importantly, how I want to show up for women.
How I want to support you
I believe pregnancy and birth are more than medical events.
They are profound transitions. They can be challenging, messy, raw and unpredictable, but they can also be deeply transformative.
For me, birth is a threshold — a passage from one version of ourselves into another. It is a time when we can discover strengths we didn't know we had and meet parts of ourselves that have been waiting to emerge.
My role is not to tell you how you should give birth.
It is to get to know you.
To understand your hopes, your fears, your history, your family and what matters to you. To give you evidence-based information without fear. To help you understand your choices and feel confident making them. To support your body, your baby and your intuition, while recognising when additional medical care is needed.
I want you to feel held, not handled.
Supported, not managed.
Informed, not frightened.
And most importantly, connected to yourself.
I am passionate about helping women reconnect with their own wisdom and inner power. I believe that every woman deserves to feel respected, listened to and deeply supported throughout pregnancy, birth and the transition into motherhood.
Get in touch!
Contact me today to see how I can help you achieve the birth of your dreams.
© 2026 Chloe Alexandra - Holistic Independent Midwife. All rights reserved.