With a desire to help and support women to feel respected, loved and acknowledged through their journey into motherhood, Claire Eccleston offers her amazing services through Spinning Babies. An experienced homebirth midwife, she is devoted to helping women reclaim the power, pleasure and wisdom of their own bodies. She offers effective, simple, gentle bodywork to improve comfort in pregnancy and ease in birth.
The passion: What inspired you to set up your business?
As I walk through this life, I feel aligned with a purpose to support women/birth givers/families to feel loved, cared for, respected and acknowledged as they transition into motherhood. As women, our bodies and our wisdom hold a lot of power. Culturally, the power that women are capable of is not always acknowledged or respected. It is such an honour to journey alongside a woman and her whanau/family as they welcome a new baby earthside. It is a privilege to observe mothers, babies, and whanau come through the experience with their sovereignty intact, with the power of their experience in their own hands.
I am so excited by the wisdom and beauty of our bodies and in particular women’s anatomy. To be able to offer bodywork that offers some comfort before or after pregnancy, that helps a labour become smooth and that supports a baby to rotate and be born with ease is such a privilege.
The launch: How did you start out in the beginning?
My mother was a midwife. I grew up with her going to births and listening to her give breastfeeding advice over the phone. From a young age I was drawn to supporting women and to the beauty of birth. I began studying nursing to become a midwife in Australia in 1998. I then became pregnant and had my first beautiful baby. I tried again to study midwifery in 2002 and conceived and then birthed my second baby. From 1998 onwards I assisted a homebirth midwife, ran antenatal and postnatal support classes and worked as a doula. The first two births I attend were twins at home. From age 17 I was studying natural medicine, massage and bodywork. From early in my birth work journey I was fortunate to have support and teachings in bodywork that supports babies to be born.
My family and I moved to the Waikato, New Zealand in 2005 so I could train and work as a homebirth midwife. From then I have been caring for whanau/families choosing mostly homebirth.
I have also integrated many courses on holistic pelvic care, urogenital osteopathy and biodynamic craniosacral therapy into one-to-one bodywork sessions with women and babies.
I facilitated the Sunnyside Up workshops in New Zealand for 5 years. These workshops supported midwives to share and learn the hands-on skills that support babies’ posterior positioning in labour to be born. I have also been a member of the New Zealand College of Midwives education team, facilitating education workshops nationally since 2015.
