I'm Holly Fraser

Before this I ran weddings, five years of them, for a hotel on the Brighton seafront. It turns out to be unexpectedly good training for birth work: long unpredictable days, enormous feelings, and the firm belief that every important room needs one calm person who isn't emotionally required to fall apart. Then my sister had her first baby. I spent a fortnight on her sofa holding, washing, listening and making toast, and I came home knowing exactly what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

I trained through a Doula UK approved preparation course, was mentored through my first births as Doula UK asks, and I've been supporting families across Brighton and Hove since 2018: first babies, second babies after hard first times, home births, hospital births, planned caesareans, and newborn seasons of every possible shape.

What a doula is, in plain words

I'm not a midwife, and I never pretend to be. Doulas support, midwives provide medical care: I work alongside your midwives, never instead of them. Your midwifery team monitors you and your baby, makes the clinical calls and does the job they trained years for. My job is everything around the edges of that. Answers when you want them, company at 3am, snacks that appear at the right moment, a hand on your shoulder, and a steady voice reminding you that you're allowed to ask questions. The two roles fit together beautifully, and the best-supported births I've seen had both.

Every birth, judgement-free

You learn quickly in this work that there is no leaderboard. Pool births, epidurals, planned caesareans, births after caesareans, breastfeeding, bottles, a bit of each: I've supported all of them with the same enthusiasm, because the only birth I'm ever rooting for is the one that's right for you. You'll never hear a preferred method from me. You'll hear your options, laid out honestly, and then you'll hear me backing your decision.

The newborn days part

The tagline says newborn days, and that half is not a footnote. The newborn weeks are exactly when the casseroles stop arriving and the real questions start, so postnatal work is half my week: babies held while parents sleep, wash loads quietly run, hot food on the table, and honest answers at kitchen-table height.

Home is the Roundhill part of Brighton, ten minutes from the sea, with a peony bush in the garden that's older than I am and still showing off every June. That's the plan for me too.