About Rachel

As a mother and grandmother with over forty years experience as a maternity nurse, child-care expert, parental adviser and author, Rachel is one of the country’s most sought after ‘gurus’ in the care and well-being of babies and young children.

As a maternity nurse she has cared for hundreds of babies and her client families include Members of Parliment, Royals, Television/Film Personalities and celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow as well as regular families all over the world.

Neither a die-hard disciplinarian nor a zealous ‘liberal’, Rachel believes in love and care within a structured routine which suits the natural patterns of both the mother and the baby.

Rachel says....

I am the eldest of six children and my youngest sister is ten years my junior, so I grew up in a home where it seemed that there were always babies and young children around. I helped my mother look after my younger siblings, so caring for babies and children came naturally to me from a very early age!

When I was seventeen, I attended a Doctor Barnado’s residential nursery training college in Kent to train for my National Nursery Examining Board Diploma. I began my training in the 1960s, before the Abortion Act and before the Pill was widely used and therefore a number of babies were brought into the unit to be placed for adoption. I also spent time in St Thomas' Hospital maternity unit; so much of my life was immersed in newborn babies which I loved.
Having completed my training, I went to London to take up my first job as a maternity nurse, looking after babies for twenty-four hours a day.

I married a farmer and we had three children of our own. Whilst raising my own children, I also helped and advised friends with their newborns. Demand feeding was becoming popular at that time and I could see that friends’ babies weren’t settled and they were struggling with sleeping and feeding problems. This confirmed my deep feeling that babies and young children actually need a loving, but flexible routine and structure in their lives from an early age.
I returned to work as a nanny and maternity nurse and have now gained many years experience in this field!

I continue to work as a maternity nurse and also now run a Baby and Childcare Consultancy business called ‘Rachel’s Babies’. I have written two books ‘The Baby Book – How to Enjoy Year One’ and ‘The Toddler Book – How to Enjoy Your Growing Child’.  I am currently writing my third book about the big issue of sleep due to be published in the Autumn of 2012.  I also speak at many different events around the country as well as running ante-natal baby courses.

Please contact Lucy Binns at Big Ape Media if you would like further information.