The Infant Feeding Coach, Jersey

10/05/2026

💜 On the last day of Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week, I thought it was important to reiterate this.

❤️‍🩹 And THIS is why I trained as a Breastfeeding Counsellor & Infant Feeding Practitioner.

It’s also why I founded 🌸Bloom🌸 - to be the support network we all need when we’ve just had a baby.

💔 Too many of us suffer with feeding, being told it’s normal to be in pain and it’s meant to be difficult. IT ISN’T.

💔 Too many of us come out of childbirth and to the end of our feeding journeys with trauma. IT IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

Although the 🌸Bloom🌸 course and other amazing mum & baby classes bring us to friends and a support network, it’s really those very first weeks when we’re “in the trenches” and before we’ve even left the house, that we really need each other.

🤰🏾 And that is what has brought me to launch a Prenatal Course, so you can make those friends and have people to lean on, before baby even arrives, and in those very first days and weeks.

💪🏼 Plus, you’ll have all the knowledge you need to trust your instincts, feel empowered and go into parenthood with confidence.

☎️ AND have all the absolute best guest experts in your contacts for when you need them!

✨LINE-UP AND BOOKINGS LAUNCHING FRIDAY✨

09/05/2026

🤩 I am so excited and proud of this new upcoming course for mums, dads & parents-to-be, and their birth partners.

🤰🏼 This course will follow you all the way through pregnancy, ensuring that you are as prepared for birth, recovery and caring for your new baby as possible.

🙌🏾 The guest experts have been hand-picked for their knowledge and experience, bringing you all you need to start your journey as a new parent with confidence and peace of mind.

🤍 Joining the course is also a perfect way to meet friends and become part of a community that will support you through the early days of parenthood.

🎁 There will be exclusive benefits when you join, including resources, discounts, community membership and events.

04/05/2026

Starting Maternal Mental Health Week with a review like this of the 🌸Bloom🌸 course makes me cry happy tears!

I’m so glad the communities created during each course have continued long after they’ve finished 🤍

And our next 🌸Bloom Brunch🌸 at the end of this month is sold out!

03/05/2026

As it’s Maternal Mental Health Month, and I’ve just finished sharing my feeding trauma story, I really want to try and raise awareness of feeding trauma throughout May.

It’s just not talked about and isn’t listed in the types of perinatal mental health disorders and challenges that mothers can face. This means it’s not recognised, validated or treated properly.

There’s also no education or awareness, so your emotions, reactions and symptoms can be confusing for you and also for those around you.

This lack of awareness and understanding can also mean that people around you can actually make things worse, by doing things that can be hugely triggering, even with the best of intentions.

For example, a loved one could let you go for a sleep, and even though you’ve asked them to wake you when the baby is hungry, they think “no, I’ll give a bottle of formula to let her sleep”. They are trying to do the right thing, but that could be DEVASTATING for a new mum. I’ve seen it many, many times.

Please, if you feel you can, share an example of any feeding sadness, difficulties, trauma or grief that you have experienced to help normalise this and validate the feelings of mums everywhere.
If you don’t feel able to share, please vote below to give me some statistics about how common these feelings are.

Here for you if you want to chat if any of this is triggering for you xx

02/05/2026

May is Maternal Mental Health Month - raising awareness of PMADs (Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders), so I wanted to release this last reel this week.

Therapy, support from my family and friends, plus creating the 🌸Bloom🌸 courses and community - it’s all helped me on my journey to recovery.

However, I am far from cured. Some things I still live with:

• I hate being away from my kids and will avoid it at all costs.

• Hearing a baby cry (even if it’s not my own) can trigger a panic attack.

• If my son cries in the car seat, and I can’t get to him immediately, I’ll go into fight or flight, which feels like panic and rage all at once.

• My face will still spasm if I get very anxious or tired.

• Intrusive thoughts and health anxiety.

• I’ve been diagnosed with therapy-resistant PTSD, so I’m now having new treatment to see if it works. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is meant to help your brain to reprocess traumatic memories, so I hope it helps.

Thank you to everyone who has stuck by me throughout all of this - those mum friends who have been there to listen and validate me, I can’t thank you enough. You know who you are!

Thank you for designing my logo and for being an amazing friend throughout both my pregnancies, and for looking after me when I’ve struggled.

Here for anyone who needs support or just someone to talk to.

28/04/2026

🌸Bloom🌸 is growing!!

✨Amazing line-ups, new co-hosts joining, beautiful locations, events for mums, parents and babies… and even toddlers!✨

💻 PLUS new benefits for anyone who joins a course.

🥳 All coming your way very soon!

27/04/2026

17/04/2026

‼️Content warning: Feeding Trauma, Anxiety and PTSD‼️

My Feeding Trauma Story: PART 2

💔 My response to our feeding trauma took many forms, so I think it’s really important to raise awareness about this so that other mothers are better understood by others, but also by themselves.

🫂 Some of these might be unexpected, but they all link back to the feeding trauma, so be gentle if you or someone you know has strong feelings about things that might be totally normal to you. This is not to judge anyone who does these things, like bottle feeding for example, it’s just to outline what I was unable to tolerate because I was traumatised.

⚠️ Some examples of my triggers:

• Anyone holding my baby, especially if they didn’t give her back as soon as I asked.

• Any comments undermining or challenging breastfeeding e.g. “are you sure your milk is enough for her?”, “if you have her formula she’d sleep better” etc etc

• The thought of giving her a bottle or a dummy.

• When we started weaning, anyone standing over her when offering her food or anybody spoon feeding her.

• Babies crying - my own, or any baby.

• Any perceived “danger” - her being too hot, too cold, getting sick, germs (this is classic hyper-vigilance often seen with PTSD).

• Separation from her. At all. For any length of time. (I couldn’t even drive to the petrol station and back.)

• My let down (the feeling when your milk comes down ready for a feed) when we weren’t together.

🤯 When I write it all down, no wonder I was struggling so much. And at the time, there was no specialist perinatal mental health support available on the NHS here.

❤️‍🩹 In Part 3 I will talk about the treatment, support and strategies that have helped me on my ongoing journey to recovery.

17/04/2026

If you haven’t seen the conversation about “Ugly Duckling Syndrome” and also watched the responses from women like and then prepare yourself for the outrage!

Despite everything we are capable of 👆🏻women are STILL being reduced to whichever box a man thinks we belong in: “Pretty”, “Ugly”, “Funny”, “Boring”… on national television.

I for one am forever changed. Matrescence (the journey of transformation we go through when we become a mother) has meant I have emerged with total self-respect and am in awe of myself and every other woman and mother. I will never again reduce myself to basic aesthetics and whether I look (or behave) how our society expects me to.

I want my daughter to know the absolute power she has within her, not ever feeling like she needs validation from misogynistic constructs. I never want her or my son to hear me talk badly about myself, see me trying to squeeze into smaller clothes or watch me dieting.

We can only continue to be reduced into words and terms like these if we allow it.
What do we want our daughters and sons listening to?
Blatant misogyny on a “family” TV show isn’t it.

15/04/2026

🙏🏻 There are a lot of new faces this week, after I shared my feeding trauma story, so I thought I’d reintroduce myself!

❤️‍🩹 Firstly, thank you to everyone who has shared and validated my experience! It means the world and I was terrified to share the footage of my facial spasm 😭

🤱🏻 I’m Nicola, a qualified Breastfeeding Counsellor & Infant Feeding Coach. I’ve supported hundreds of women and families since completing my training, and it is work that lights up my soul!

💜 I’m a Champion, committed to improving outcomes for women and babies, in birth, feeding and by reducing and treating trauma.

🇵🇹 I’m married to André, who is Portuguese, from the beautiful island of Madeira.

🇯🇪 We live in Jersey, in the Channel Islands, between France 🇫🇷 and the UK 🇬🇧 (the island that New Jersey in the US 🇺🇸 is named after!)

🩷💙 We are incredibly lucky to have 2 beautiful children, our daughter who is 3, and our son who is nearly 1! We are raising them bilingual and with a mash-up of both our cultures 🤣

🫂 I’m trying to raise awareness of feeding traumas like mine, so that women and parents suffering, or who have suffered in the past, can feel validated and can seek the support they need.

🤰🏾 We talk about birth trauma much more now thankfully, but not feeding trauma. And with scary statistics around the safety of mothers when birthing in hospitals, it’s so important to make sure that all of our traumas are part of the dialogue around pregnancy, birth and postpartum care.

🧠 We need to be able to name what has happened to us and have the right support. Not all therapy is appropriate for these kinds of traumas, which I will discuss in Part 2.

12/04/2026

‼️Content warning: Birth and Feeding Trauma‼️

🤱🏻 I’ve been waiting a long time (3.5 years) to share the true extent of my feeding trauma and I’ve been terrified to share the pictures of my facial spasm, which was brought on by PTSD and anxiety.

🩷 But after having so many lovely messages from you all after my episode, I thought it was time to share my story. I hope it validates any strong feelings you’ve had about feeding your baby - whether that be breast, bottle, pumping or a combination.

💔 Thankfully, we now talk more openly about birth trauma, but feeding trauma is still rarely discussed or validated.

‼️ FEEDING TRAUMA IS REAL - so many women I support are suffering with it and we deserve to feel understood. If anything proves how significant our feelings around feeding are, look at how my mental distress presented itself physically until I put boundaries in place to honour my feeding journey with my daughter.

🫂 I offer debriefs for anyone who has experienced feeding trauma, so please reach out if you think it might help you.

❤️‍🩹 I will share more on how I recovered and who helped me in Part 2

There are very few people speaking out about feeding trauma, but and .jenna.psychologist are helping to normalise this.