I didn’t know it at the time. I was just a new mum trying to figure it all out like everyone else - exhausted, overwhelmed, and quietly amazed that nobody had really prepared me for how much pregnancy and birth would change my body.

What I did know was that Pilates was helping me. Not just physically -though it was doing that too - but it was giving me something back that I hadn’t even realised I’d lost. An hour that was mine. A room full of women who got it. A reminder that I was still a person, not just a mother.

During both pregnancies that one hour a week in a class meant everything to me. Surrounded by other women going through the same thing, feeling less alone in it, remembering that what we were doing - growing a human -was actually extraordinary.

And postpartum? That was harder than I expected. The relentlessness of it. Being responsible for someone else every single hour of every single day. I treasured the baby weigh-in sessions — not for the numbers, but just to show up somewhere and talk to another adult. I tried the gym but I always seemed to be late for the start of the class and then dropping my baby in the crèche - the timings never quite worked. I went to outdoor classes in the park and loved them but always wished there was somewhere warm, somewhere I could take my baby without the logistics.

So eventually I just thought - I’ll build it.

In 2016 Mummies Matter was born. Two Pilates classes a week. A small community of women finding their feet in motherhood together. I had no idea then that it would grow into everything it has become.

But looking back -all of it was shaping something. Every class, every conversation, every woman who came through the door. It was all pointing me here. My second baby I noticed something. Pilates had been quietly transforming my recovery - and I could see that the women around me were searching for exactly the same thing. Not just exercise., but s space, a community. Somewhere they could bring their baby, move their body and remember who they were beyond being a mother.