Happy New Year 🥳
Before we get started on this week’s newsletter, I wanted to wish you a healthy and hopeful 2026.
Over the Christmas period, I found myself reading yet more headlines about poor maternity care. With the maternal health inquiry now underway, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the issues run deeper and are more widespread than many of us had originally realised.
One statistic in particular stayed with me; caesarean sections are now the most common mode of delivery in the UK. For some, they are lifesaving and essential. But at a system level, it raises important questions about how we are supporting women throughout pregnancy, birth, and recovery.
As both a mother and a Nurse, reading this was deeply unsettling, but it also strengthened my resolve. It reminded me why bringing meaningful, preventative change to maternal healthcare isn’t optional. It’s urgent.
Motherhood doesn’t unfold in emergencies — it unfolds in the in-between moments
Motherhood is a continuous journey, and most maternal health challenges don’t begin as emergencies.
It’s a journey of profound transformation, both beautiful and demanding, and there is no one-size-fits-all experience. Every mother’s path looks different, which is exactly why personalised healthcare matters so much.
This journey doesn’t end after giving birth or returning to work. It unfolds in stages, phases, seasons, each one asking something different of you. Yet maternal healthcare is still largely delivered in fragments.
Appointments are spaced weeks apart, particularly for second or subsequent pregnancies. Once postnatal care ends and midwifery support is discharged, many mothers are left largely on their own, navigating a complex physical and emotional transition without continuity of care. For some, this lack of support contributes to deeply distressing health outcomes.
Our bodies and minds don’t change on a schedule. Symptoms shift daily. One day, stress feels manageable, and sleep comes easily; the next, it doesn’t. The questions we carry change, too, and many of those questions feel too small, or too embarrassing, to ask out loud.
But these questions matter. And so do your feelings. They deserve to be recognised and normalised, not dismissed or minimised.
“It was the in-between ones.
The moments where something felt off, but not urgent.
The moments where I wondered whether what I was feeling was “normal” or whether I was overthinking things.”
Motherhood is continuous — our care systems are not
Motherhood is a continuous transformation — a process known as matrescence. It unfolds emotionally, physiologically, and psychologically, as a mother evolves through different seasons of her life.
This transformation doesn’t happen in neat stages or on predictable timelines. As motherhood changes, so do a woman’s needs, often quietly, and often in ways that don’t fit into a single appointment or pathway.
Yet maternal healthcare is still largely delivered episodically. Support varies widely depending on where a mother lives, how services are structured locally, and what resources happen to be available at that time. For many, it feels like a postcode lottery.
In our conversations with mothers, we’ve seen clear differences in access to support. Mothers in parts of Warwickshire, for example, often describe far greater continuity of care than those living in areas of Birmingham, despite need often being higher where support is most limited.
Some mothers see the same midwife throughout their pregnancy. Others see a different professional at every appointment. This isn’t about blame or fault; it’s simply an observation of a system that wasn’t designed around continuity.
When care is fragmented, important context gets lost. Patterns are harder to spot. And mothers are left to hold the story of their own health together, often without the reassurance or continuity they need. In between appointments, a lot happens. Questions arise at 2 am during the night, long after clinicians are around to answer these questions.
You are not failing, the system was never built for this
When care is delivered in fragments and without continuity, mothers are left to self-manage what happens in between appointments.
That is not your fault.
It doesn’t mean you’re failing.
It means the system isn’t designed around how maternal health actually unfolds.
This isn’t a confidence issue.
It’s a design problem.
As a nurse, I’ve seen this pattern again and again. Many maternal health challenges don’t begin as emergencies. They build quietly, through small moments that feel manageable on their own, but accumulate over time. Support often only appears once a threshold is crossed, by which point a mother has already been carrying a great deal, for far too long.
Matresa is being built because of this gap, the space between appointments where so much of motherhood actually happens. We’re creating personalised, preventative maternal healthcare that supports mothers between check-ins, not just during them.
The aim isn’t to medicalise normal experiences. It’s to provide clarity earlier, so support can happen before things escalate.
At its core, this means care that:
• Helps make early risk visible without alarm, through personalised health insights
• Provides clarity instead of dismissal, with built-in screening tools
• Supports the mother–baby dyad across the full journey of matrescence
We’re still early in this journey, and we’re building thoughtfully.
If this resonates with you, you’re warmly invited to join the Matresa waitlist. That’s where we’ll share early access, resources, and upcoming live sessions, and where this conversation will continue to evolve.