Our Journey

Hello, My name is Lesley and I am a mum of 2 crazy boys!

I first started my perinatal education journey back in 2020 but my journey truly started in 2017 after the birth of my first son. I started to volunteer with Walk Forth Bumps & Babies (trading under a different name back then!) and then volunteered with the Forth Valley Breastfeeding Network in 2019. During this time, I became fascinated with the amount of information out there about birthing, breastfeeding and all things baby!

In 2021 during the COVID pandemic, and whilst on maternity with my second child, I started my year long training with The Daisy Foundation to become a perinatal educator. During this time I learnt so much more information and couldn’t wait to start sharing it all with my community! I started teaching my very own Daisy classes in 2022.

Roll on April 2023 and the announcement was made to us teachers, that The Daisy Foundation would be ceasing trading as of the end of August. I decided at this point that creating my own business was right for me and was excited at the prospect of growing and creating a brand of my own.

And so NURTURING FLOWS was born!

At first, I started out as a soletrader and moved my classes into a rhythm that felt right for my community and me. I wanted to run my classes holistically and in a person-centered way, to better serve the families attending the classes. It was important for the classes to feel like safe, warm places to be, so I reduced the class sizes and moved away from set structures; allowing myself to flow to the rhythm of the individuals in the class. But I wanted to do more. 

I strongly believe that everyone should: have an understanding in how their bodies birth; how to hold, interact and care for their babies; and an understanding of the recovering postnatal body. Classes both antenatally and postnatally can be vital places for people to learn techniques in the care of their child, become informed about the latest information, and become more confident in the care they are providing. Not only that, it is a place to talk through their experiences, debrief their parenting journey so far, ask questions on conflicting advice they have received, and simply feel heard and supported.  

I wanted to make sure that everyone could access my classes and so I started to look for funding. I also then started to look into different ways I could provide for my community and new ideas started to come forth as I talked with the individuals in the classes. At this point I decided that being a soletrader was not in the best interest of the community I was serving, and for me and my family. So I decided to change to a Community Interest Company: Nurturing Communities.

Nurturing Flows remains a project now within the growing company. I can’t wait to go on this journey with you, and see where this journey will take us!