As your private midwife serving Sussex, Surrey, and Kent, I see you and truly witness your journey from pregnancy through birth and beyond. Rise Midwives offers independent midwifery care rooted in trust, embodied wisdom, and relationship-based support.
You’re not looking for someone to deliver your baby. You’re looking for an independent midwife who trusts your body, understands birth deeply, and knows when to stay close and when to step back.
✓ Over 17 Years Midwifery Experience
✓ Continuity of Care Throughout Your Journey
✓ Experienced Home Birth Support
Hey I”m V, I’ve been a midwife since 2009. I trained at the University of Milan, then spent years in NHS community midwifery in Brighton. The NHS gave me so much – clinical experience, working with diverse families, understanding systems from the inside.
But it was working alongside experienced independent midwives in Italy that taught me what’s possible when you give women time and trust their bodies. Birthing my own two babies at home deepened that knowing. Training in bodywork and nervous system practices – craniosacral therapy, biomechanics, somatic work, birth trauma support – shaped how I hold space now.
Rise Midwives was born from a partnership with Nelly – two midwives hungry to practise the way we knew was possible – with time, with presence, with trust at the centre. Nelly is currently on maternity leave, living her own fourth trimester.
Most of the time, my work is quiet. I stay out of the way. When skill is needed, I use it – but birth works best when women are trusted, not managed.
We serve families across Sussex and surrounding areas, taking limited clients each month because this work requires presence, not production.
I take a limited number of families each month so I can offer real continuity and presence.
One midwife from early pregnancy through birth and the weeks of early motherhood. For women who want deep continuity throughout the whole journey.
Support from 30 weeks through birth and early postpartum. For women who want expert care through the final preparation and birth itself.
Elevated pregnancy care and preparation for women planning to birth with the NHS OR support for the weeks after the birth. Presence, support, healing, and integration.
— Emma, Mother of two, East Sussex
I don’t take over your journey.
I don’t run your pregnancy or direct your birth. My role is to stay alongside you and protect the conditions your body needs to do what it already knows how to do. Most of the time, that means less interference, not more. Paying attention. Waiting. Trusting the process as it unfolds.
Time is the intervention most women are never given
Pregnancy, birth, and postpartum each have their own rhythm. They don’t respond well to being rushed or squeezed into timelines that don’t belong to them. I work at the pace your body sets, without pressure to move things along for the sake of a system. Time creates space for trust to grow, for questions to surface, and for your body to soften into the work it is doing.
I read bodies, not just charts
I use evidence and clinical knowledge, and I don’t rely on numbers alone. I don’t just read results. I pay attention to you, your body, your responses, and how you are experiencing this. I notice how you move, how you breathe, and how things shift over time. Both the clinical picture and the lived, embodied one matter, and my role is to hold them together.
One relationship changes everything
This work is built on relationship. You don’t meet me for the first time in labour. We get to know each other over months, so I understand your history, what has shaped you, and what helps you feel safe enough to open. Your partner knows me too. That continuity changes how supported you feel and how birth is lived, not just how it unfolds.
That is the foundation I work from. Presence. Attention. Relationship. Care that adapts to you, rather than asking you to adapt to it.
I support families across East Sussex including Brighton & Hove, Lewes, Seaford, Newhaven, Eastbourne and Hastings, plus West Sussex including Worthing, Horsham, Haywards Heath and Shoreham. Kent and Surrey are possible depending on location and availability.
If you’re nearby, reach out, we’ll see what’s possible
This is a space to see whether this way of working is right for you, and whether our timing aligns. It’s a conversation to slow things down, ask questions, and sense whether this kind of relationship-based care feels supportive for you at this stage.
A guided meditation to help you connect with your inner wisdom and your baby throughout pregnancy, birth, and postpartum.
Subscribe to join our circle and receive birth stories, evidence-based resources, and womb wisdom in your inbox.
