About Mama Lee

 Meet Lee Standeven, the highly experienced Midwife behind the magic.

" the beauty of a transformational birth is incredible. Sadly for a lot of couples it can be the most disempowering experience and I want to change this.  I want to show you how to have the most delightful experience. 

Knowledge, support, and power is important for all women and families, no matter how or where you chose to birth your babies."

My thoughts.

I appreciate that having a baby can be a varied experience for women, and may come with a range of emotions, elations and challenges at different times. I have been with birthing women for the past fifteen years and know that kindness, sensitivity, honesty, expertise, skill and true caring from the heart is what is required to assist families in navigating the path of pregnancy, birth and beyond.

I support women to choose what is right for them and their family, and to celebrate their decisions. Feeling good about your choices, and reflecting on your pregnancy and birth journey with warmth and pride is of great value for a healthy future.

How Mama Lee came to be.

When I was 27, I was in a truck traveling from England to Ghana. I met an old woman in a village in Morocco who told me that being the eldest in the village gave her the privilege to welcome in new life, and there sparked a passion in me (that led to moving to New Zealand and training to be a midwife for three years), in the hope of growing old and putting my two hands to good use.

After meeting the old woman and weeks of travel, I finally arrived in the village in Ghana and met a little four year old boy whom I instantly loved and still do, he called me 'Mama Lee' and it stuck to the point that shop keepers, taxi drivers, birth attendants, and all that hear of me, call "Mama Lee!"

I made a promise to myself that I would return to Ghana and have made the trip too many times to count. The traditional birth attendants there care for the women in their villages with love and kindness and with very little resources. I have worked alongside 72 traditional birth attendants, sharing techniques for safe birth practices, and cared for over 400 village women for whom I raise funds with the aim to help those in need, to provide supplies for a safe, clean birth and reduce infection rates and complications.

Since then.

I have had the pleasure to:

  • work with women and their families around the world birthing at home, in hospital and in birth centres;
  • teach midwifery and medical students;
  • work alongside traditional birth attendants;
  • be awarded a fellowship to work towards the World Health Organisation Millennium Goals;
  • be contracted by the Health Department to review and write reports on student midwives clinical placements, endorsed midwives, and was project lead for maternity services which saw ‘continuity of care’ introduced to three regional hospitals which were on the verge of closure;
  • was a founding member of the Holistic Health Practitioner Network;
  • work in Midwifery Group Practice; become one of the first midwives to set up my own private practice for home and hospital birth;
  • be credentialled to order bloods, ultrasounds and prescribe;
  • teach antenatal classes around the world;
  • train with healers and advanced midwives globally;
  • and independently volunteer in developing countries.

For the women I have provided birth care for, no matter in what setting, the vaginal birth rate of my clients over my 12 years of clinical practice was 98% (in comparison with current national data which is only 66%). Please know that I am not opposed to C-section, in fact I know that they can be used wisely and beautifully, and we are fortunate to have them as an option!

It really has been a wonderful, amazing and diverse fifteen years (12 years of practice, and over 3 years of midwifery training) being with women and birthing babies. Which is great, because it means that as I have learned from women, their amazing families,  and some truly remarkable practitioners from different health and healing modalities, as well as midwives in retreats and workshops around the world. I have been able to add more, grow more and craft my classes into something special that I believe in and that I know works. I love teaching, and sharing knowledge and appreciate the difference it can make in people’s lives,  I’m really looking forward to this next chapter online.

Over the past twenty years I have learnt and practiced Reiki level 1 and 2, massage, pranic healing and lived in Israel to train in the art of the Spalter technique of healing, all of which has come in handy when working with women and their families. Fortunately, I travel to Israel each year to learn more about the body and healing, and to Ghana, where i continue to work in villages and continue to gather stories and knowledge to make a documentary, which will tell the story of some of the kind birth workers around the world, and I hope to call it ‘kindness: the art of caring’.

I have loved caring for women in my local community, and I look forward to sharing and growing with you all in my global community.

I’m excited to meet you! See you online and lets start learning together.

Hospital & Home Birth

Water Birth

Antenatal Care

Continuity of Care

Homebirth

Group Antenatal Classes

Africa

Keep in touch

I'll let you know when I'm running live events around the world, presenting, or creating new classes... or have special news to share from time to time.