Holistic Babies London

How does it work?

When you hire our Newborn Care Specialist, she will come to your home at an agreed time to attend to your baby's needs for her shift. On her first night with you, she will take a history of the pregnancy, birth, or adoption, the baby's background, and feeding so far, and make a plan with you for the night ahead.

If you are breastfeeding, she will conduct a breastfeeding assessment to ensure all is well and discuss your preferences for the night. If you are expressing breast milk, she will support you in expressing your milk and bottle feeding. She will show you how to safely make bottles and feed your baby if you are formula feeding, including mix feeding.

During the night, she will bring your baby to you if you have agreed on it, supervise the feed, offer you tips, and take your baby away to change the nappy or help you in the early days if you wish to do so yourself. She will settle the baby, maximizing your sleep. In the morning, she will return your baby to you and briefly hand over how the night went.

Within 24 hours after her shift, she will email you a report of the night events with some tips, advice, guidelines, and links if needed. If you have decided to bottle-feed your baby, your Newborn Care Specialist will support you with bottle feeding your baby at night while you sleep, changing your baby's nappy and settling your baby to sleep.

It is also possible for you to offer some breastfeeds in the night, and your Newborn Care Specialist will do a feed or two with expressed breast milk so that you can get a longer stretch of sleep. We are flexible and more than happy to work with you to protect breastfeeding while you get some rest.

Please note that as per lactation evidence, we recommend waiting until six weeks postpartum before expressing breast milk to allow your supply to establish.

If you are keen to breastfeed, we suggest booking 2 to 3 nights a week (one on, one off) so that you can work on establishing milk supply by reducing the time you spend away from your baby, at least in the initial few weeks.

Our Newborn Care Specialists have a midwifery/clinical/infant feeding background in the NHS, and they have a wealth of experience and knowledge, specialized additional training, and access to the latest evidence from medical journals and guidelines in the field of midwifery, lactation, formula feeding, infant sleep, newborn health, to name a few.

All of the Newborn Care Specialists are DBS checked, insured, and registered with relevant professional bodies such as The Nursing and Midwifery Council, The Royal College of Midwives, The Complementary & Natural Healthcare Council, and the International Association for Child Sleep Consultants, meaning their character references have been thoroughly checked and approved.

We also offer an ad hoc night for you to catch up on your sleep.

The night fee is 8 to 12 hours from £25 per hour.