Nurturing Mums founders Elise Mendelle and Gemma Frenchman
Read why two North London mums, Elise Mendelle and Gemma Frenchman, were inspired to start running postnatal courses – and how they are helping new mums get off to a positive start to parenting.
What inspired you to start Nurturing Mums?
Our experiences of being first-time mums were challenging to the say the least! We thought there must be a better way to start off on the motherhood journey.
What does Nurturing Mums do?
We run six week courses for new mums where they can socialise and make new friends, hear from top baby experts to clarify the abundance of confusing baby information, and have fun at our relaxed, non-judgemental atmosphere. We also have pastries and hot drinks, prize draws and enjoy a pamper morning to finish off the course!
How did you move from idea to making it happen?
While we were in the process of getting the first course organised, we were already getting enquiries! So we decided to go for it – we ran our first course with a great group of four mums and haven’t looked back since then.
We recently bumped into one of the mums, who let us know that a couple of them still meet up from that first group. Since then, we have successfully run eight courses, and have recently started at a second venue.
How do you share the workload between you?
We bounce ideas off of each other all of the time – the work often gets divided naturally based on each other’s strengths. Nurturing Mums is growing steadily and we are both working hard towards achieving our expansion goals.
Why should mums join a postnatal group?
We think every mum should enjoy their postnatal experience. There is no one way to parent! We believe that mums can benefit from others’ experiences and take valuable information from our guest speakers.
Sleep tips are like gold dust, weaning often causes anxiety, and relationships can be rocky when you just have a baby – we have designed our course to tackle these issues head-on and give mums confidence in their new role. Above all, we want mums to find motherhood enjoyable with new friends, not feel lonely and isolated.
How have you already helped mums?
The mums from our groups have stayed in contact long after the course finishes, and many have made friends for life. We love hearing from mums of older babies telling us that they wished Nurturing Mums had been around when they were first-time mums!
What’s the most rewarding thing about what you do?
We get positive feedback all of the time which is extremely rewarding. Any mum who tells us that their baby slept longer or fed better or was less fussy based on tips from our course, gives us enormous pride.
We had The London Mum blog about our course, which validated much of what we are doing in print! ‘Loved our session yesterday – so glad I joined your group. You guys are amazing!’
What have been your biggest successes?
We weren’t sure we were ready to launch in a second venue, but we went for it and our first course was fully booked!
Where do you want Nurturing Mums to be in five years?
We hope to have our postnatal courses across the UK. We want to help as many mums as possible and make postnatal support synonymous with Nurturing Mums!
What’s your advice for other ambitious mums?
Work hard and play hard. You can do it all but you have to prioritise and lose the guilt.
You can find out more about Nurturing Mums on their website.
