Melanie Mawji is its founder Mels Space and Mama Bear Birth Prepoffering compassionate, trauma-informed support to individuals and families navigating pregnancy, birth and beyond. Beginning her career as a birth doula, she saw firsthand the emotional impact that challenging birth experiences can have. This inspired her to train as a counselor and create a safe, supportive space where her clients can feel heard, empowered and better prepared, whether processing past experiences or approaching birth with confidence and clarity. Here, she talks to The Natural Parent magazine about the passion behind her work, the challenges she’s overcome along the way, and her hopes and dreams for the future.
The passion: What inspired you to create your business?
I always wanted to be a midwife! Supporting women through birth is in my soul. I was attracted to independent midwifery despite the increasingly medicalized guidance on NHS midwifery, however I knew I would still need to train as an NHS midwife to become independent and I didn’t like that. A little sad to realize I was never going to be a midwife, instead I trained as a birth doula because it spoke more to my desire to support autonomy in birth. I loved and felt incredibly honored to be with the families I supported during their births and very quickly realized that the part I loved even more was watching them gain confidence, become empowered, believe in their abilities and learn to hold their own space in the delivery room! This worked much better for clients than blindly handing over autonomy when they walked through the hospital doors. Honestly, it was so beautiful to see their confidence blossom.
Then I wanted to make sure I was a safe place for my clients to land and so, I trained as a counselor. I realized that birthers could be incredibly vulnerable during pregnancy, birth and the months after. Hormones were changing to prepare for optimal birth and rearing. Additionally, people bring their own history and generational trauma to the birth space. Being a consultant has given me the confidence to keep all of this.
From here I built Mels Space counseling, specializing in birth. I absolutely love the work and even trained in EMDR so I can feel confident supporting all my clients who have experienced good trauma. And yet, something still didn’t sit right with me. Why was I left to deal with the consequences of unnecessary interventions, which left damage to the birth or even the whole family?! The long-term implications of this were not lost on me.
This prompted me to pounce Mama Bear Birth Prepa childbirth preparation course designed to prepare parents for the realities of current maternity care. Mama Bear it’s essentially a birth bootcamp! I am so passionate about preventing damage by helping parents fully prepare for what may come their way, rather than picking up the pieces of broken families, both emotionally and physically. I really feel like I can offer the whole package, no matter what stage I meet my families at.
The launch: How did you get started in the first place?
Not surprisingly, my passion for birth came from my own experience of a hospital birth with my son and then two beautiful water births with my daughters. Both of my home birth experiences presented challenges that required me to fight for the birth I passionately believed I was capable of. For example, when I booked with my youngest, I was told that because I’m a ‘geriatric mum’, I should book an admission. This made absolutely no sense to me. If I were that old and weak, being “geriatric”, then surely contractions that were involuntary rather than progressive would be harder to deal with and more likely to lead to problems. I was 41 and physically fit, with no medical reasons for my baby or myself as to why another home birth was not an option. I went home and searched the internet for studies that supported what I was being told. I found only one study from the 1960s that was based on clinically obese women. I contacted the midwife consultant at the hospital and told her that I still intended to birth my baby at home as I did with my last birth and that I absolutely would not be having an induction. The consultant midwife completely agreed with me and emailed all the other consultants to basically tell them to leave me alone. I had my second wonderful home birth. However, all around me, people were injured or damaged from birth because they were just doing what they were told. People didn’t know that in most cases the system was one-size-fits-all and didn’t give them the special care they should have.
And so going back to your original question, the launch is recent and it was just to get the message out there through socials, blogs and here with you of course. We live in an age where the system does not have the resources to support you and your baby’s needs, so you must and can do it yourself.
Innovation: What has been the biggest breakthrough for you with your business?
I’ve been wondering about the problems of the direct impact of overstretched maternity services and the easy use of medical interventions for years and so every time a new report comes out that supports what I’m saying, I’d do a little happy dance that understanding was growing. And then nothing happens, nothing changes and so I feel deflated again. But my inner fire pulls me back and I get back on the soap box. Right now, the midwives themselves, led by the wonderful Leah Hazard, are speaking out about the dangerous working conditions they practise. I’m behind them all the way, because if they’re not safe to labor, no one in the delivery room is safe. So instead of a great breakthrough, it’s about staying resilient for the purpose.
Yin and Yang: How do you balance work and family?
This is hard, because I was already home schooling my oldest daughter. My youngest is thriving at school, but for my older daughter, school was starting to crush her confidence and she just wasn’t a good fit. I was lucky that my husband was earning enough to allow me to focus on her education. As she got older and became more independent in her learning, and then started working towards her GCSEs, I was able to take some time to start building my business. Throughout my time in consulting, I was used to staying up late after the kids went to bed to complete essays and case studies, but that wasn’t really sustainable. And so I’ve basically chipped away bit by bit, building slowly when I had small windows of time. My passion for wanting to see better birth outcomes has never wavered, even in my toughest times. The key was really seeing my goal at the top of a mountain, continuing to climb in small steps, not being hard on myself if I had to stop due to family needs. I’m here for the long haul and I’ll be happy if the day comes when I can put my soapbox away because the system does what it’s supposed to.
