Made in Fulham
It never fails to surprise us what a talented bunch you Fulham folks are. Each month Urban Village Ldn introduces you to THe Fulham face behind an idea, product or business and asks them what they love about being a local resident.
This month we talk to Amanda Thompson, co Founder of Bundle Baby London who run antenatal, postnatal, PAEDIATRIC first aid and next baby refresher courses in Fulham.
How long have you called Fulham home? I have lived in Fulham on and off for 30 years! Did I really say that? But it became proper home I guess once I had my children. So 21 years ago now….
Tell us a bit about yourself and your family. We did the usual three moves within Fulham as my family grew. I have two sets of twins and one boy in the middle – ranging from early 20’s to 15 year olds. 4 boys and 1 girl. I have a dog called Rudi – another cockerpoo to add to the community and a cat called Maggie May who actually is the real princess of the house! My husband works within the catering sector and I am an antenatal teacher, baby massage instructor, hypnobirthing instructor (still to practice!) and co-founder of Bundle London. I am very lucky, as my sister lives a couple of streets away with her family which means that we can touch base regularly and help each other as and when it’s needed.
What's your favourite local haunt? Hmmm. I find that quite a challenging question actually as I wish that we had slightly cooler places to hang out! Having said that I do like the Glasshouse Cafe at the Palace Gardener for a girly quick bite; Aragon house for their Caesar salad and the Re-centre towards Hammersmith does the best scrambled eggs ever! Evening wise – this is where I struggle to be honest. I tend to get out of Fulham!
What's your slice of Fulham heaven and why? The Power Yoga studio on Lettice Street. Great calming space – lovely people. Great teachers – I have to mention Vicky Fox and Harriet in particular. I love them!
If you could do one thing to improve Fulham what would it be? Bars with Live Music; Funkier independent shops. Wish it was a little bit more hip!
Tell us about Bundle London and how it came to be. I have been an antenatal teacher for 14 years and worked for a private company that closed down 18 months ago now. During that time, I met Deborah who was head of logistics – she’s brilliant fun and we hit it off really quickly. We were very keen to continue to offer new parents to be, excellent antenatal courses with different practitioners coming in to run the different classes. So we work with a midwife, a breastfeeding specialist and a baby sleep expert too. We know how important it is for parents to receive up to date unbiased evidence based information so that they can make choices that are right for them. Equally as important or probably even more so is the fact that our course focuses heavily on life with your baby and what that is really like. We don’t want parents journey to end with us once they have had their baby, so we run lovely baby massage and baby yoga courses, weaning, meet ups and coffee mornings and a really good Paediatric First Aid course. We also have strong relationships with a team of experts so can sign post parents pretty much anywhere in terms of maternal/paternal/paediatric support. In addition, we have worked hard within our community and parents who attend our course will get access to brilliant deals/offers with Paola’s Baby Barre classes, with a fantastic hypnobirthing teacher, a bespoke maternity nurse/night nanny agency to name but a few.
What advice would you give to anyone starting their own restaurant business? Go for it! Give it the best go you possibly can. Try to work with someone else to bounce ideas off and to keep yourself motivated and at the end of the day, if it doesn’t work out, then at least you have learnt something along the way and hopefully had lots of fun. Word of mouth is your best friend and so is Google!
