07/09/2026
Julie’s Journey
A lifetime of learning, listening and supporting women through birth
Long before I became a Birth and Post Natal Doula Trainer, before I had taught thousands of couples, before I had developed courses and built a business around supporting women and their families, I was simply a young woman who was about to become a mother.
And, like so many women, I was excited.
I remember the extraordinary feeling of knowing that a baby was growing inside me. I was tired, I had morning sickness, and I was certainly not immune to the anxieties that accompany pregnancy, but underneath it all was an enormous sense of wonder.
There was just one problem.
I had heard the stories.
The frightening birth stories. The stories of pain, intervention, emergencies and women feeling that birth had happened to them rather than being something they had actively participated in.
Those stories frightened me enough to make me curious.
Rather than allowing the fear to settle in, I decided to learn.
I began researching birth long before I was pregnant and, when my pregnancy was confirmed in 1986, I already knew that I wanted to explore my options. I chose the Birth Centre at the Royal Hospital for Women in Paddington, Sydney—the only birth centre in New South Wales at the time. I wanted to be somewhere that encouraged women to remain active during labour and to birth in positions that felt instinctive and comfortable to them.
What I didn't expect was quite how much resistance I would encounter.
When I told friends and family that I hoped to birth naturally, many responded with stories intended to protect me from disappointment.
They told me birth was unpredictable.
They told me not to get my hopes up.
They warned me that I would probably need pain relief, perhaps an epidural, perhaps intervention, and that I shouldn't think I could control what happened.
Some even joked that I would end up having a caesarean anyway.
I understood that much of this advice came from their own experiences. They were trying, in their own way, to prepare me.
But something inside me quietly said:
“Don't give up before you've even begun.”
So I didn't.
The wisdom of women
One of the greatest gifts of my early journey was discovering that there were women who had walked this path before me.
My own mother was one of them.
Mum had experienced a difficult first birth involving drugs and forceps. But when she became pregnant with me, she changed doctors and hospitals, stayed home for as long as possible and eventually gave birth to me naturally.
She described my birth as a beautiful experience.
She also told me something that stayed with me: the recovery for both her and her first baby had been difficult, whereas her experience after my birth had been so much more pleasant.
Her story mattered to me.
Perhaps because it was personal. Perhaps because I trusted her.
Perhaps because it showed me that one birth did not necessarily have to dictate the next.
I began seeking out women who could teach me—not simply women who had opinions about birth, but women who had knowledge and experience.
I attended courses. I asked questions. I read.
Kerry McGowan, an educator who became an important influence on me, encouraged me to read New Active Birth by Janet Balaskas. I read Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin and immersed myself in the books of Sheila Kitzinger, who was widely regarded as one of the great childbirth educators of her generation.
I also read Everywoman by Dr Derek Llewellyn-Jones, whose compassionate approach appealed to me.
With every book, every conversation and every woman I met, my understanding grew.
I was still nervous.
Of course I was.
I was a first-time mother.
There were moments when I wondered whether I was being overly ambitious or simply naïve.
But I learned something that has stayed with me throughout my life:
You can feel afraid and still move forward.
Or, in the words that became a kind of personal philosophy for me:
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
Becoming a mother
My motivation was never simply about having a particular kind of birth.
It was about wanting the best possible beginning for my baby and wanting to feel prepared.
I wanted to understand what was happening to my body. I wanted to know about different comfort measures. I wanted to understand how movement, breathing, relaxation and positioning could help.
And, perhaps most importantly, I wanted to approach birth feeling informed rather than frightened.
I eventually gave birth to both of my sons naturally, using movement, showers, baths, hot packs and deep relaxation breathing—and I had doula support at both births.
Those experiences were profoundly empowering for me.
My first son, Ken, was born at the original Natural Birth Centre at the Royal Hospital for Women in Paddington.
I had hoped to have a waterbirth, and I remember being in the bath and feeling that I was doing wonderfully. At that time, however, the hospital did not have a waterbirth policy, and I was required to leave the bath for the second stage.
It was disappointing.
But that disappointment ultimately opened another door.
When I later became pregnant with my second son, I spoke with the Birth Centre manager, who suggested that if waterbirth was important to me, I might consider homebirth.
And so my second birth became a completely different chapter.
Ryan and the gift of trust
For my second birth, I chose Maggie Lecky-Thompson as my homebirth midwife.
Maggie was an extraordinarily experienced and respected midwife, having attended hundreds of homebirths. There was something about her that gave me confidence. I trusted her.
I went well beyond my expected due date and eventually gave birth to Ryan at home in 1990.
It was a rapid birth, lasting around an hour and a half, with intense contractions that Maggie later described as “triple peaking”.
Ryan was born in the caul, surrounded by people who loved me and supported me.
My mother was there too.
She cared for three-and-a-half-year-old Ken, who was fascinated by the placenta, after I gave birth to his little brother.
During pushing, I quickly asked Mum to take some photographs.
She was wonderfully quick with the camera.
Those photographs became precious memories—not simply because they recorded the birth of my son, but because they captured my mother being there beside me.
Mum has since passed away, and those memories have become even more precious.
There are moments in life that you don't fully understand the value of until much later.
That is one of mine.
The following day Maggie reminded me how intense those contractions had been.
Fortunately, breathing was something I already knew well. I had been teaching relaxation and Hypnobirthing breathing techniques, so when I needed them, they were deeply embedded in me.
Both births took enormous energy.
But they also left me feeling elated, energised and ready to bond with my babies.
And somewhere along the way, I realised something else:
I loved birth.
Not just my own births.
Birth itself.
The beginning of a vocation
My original professional training began in 1988, when I undertook an intensive, year-long Childbirth and Parenting Education course with Parents Centres Australia.
It was not a casual course.
There were assignments, examinations, practical requirements and high expectations.
Students dropped out.
At one point, our numbers became so small that we were told the course itself might not continue.
But a small group of us stayed.
We persisted.
And when I finally received my certificate, I was absolutely thrilled.
I thought I had reached the destination.
In reality, I had only reached the beginning.
As part of our training, we were required to attend births and write detailed reports about our experiences.
We were expected to be actively involved in supporting the woman and her partner—not simply standing in the corner observing.
We were required to attend three births.
I loved it so much that I attended twelve in my first year.
I remember the excitement.
The anticipation.
The nervousness.
And the extraordinary feeling of leaving a birth knowing that you had been privileged to witness something utterly remarkable.
For days afterwards I could be on a high.
There was simply something about helping a woman through labour, watching her meet her baby and seeing the transformation in the room that touched something very deep inside me.
The women taught me too
Over the years, I began collecting birth stories.
Not just the births I attended, but the stories women told me afterwards.
I listened to women.
I listened to their partners.
I listened to their mothers and families.
And gradually I realised that one of the most important things I could offer was not simply information.
It was confidence.
Women often arrived at my classes frightened because they had heard frightening stories.
Some had already experienced difficult births.
Others simply didn't know what to expect.
I wanted to give them something different.
I wanted them to understand their options.
I wanted their partners to know how to participate.
I wanted couples to understand both medical and non-medical approaches to birth.
And I wanted them to discover that preparation could make an enormous difference to how they approached the experience.
For almost four decades I have taught pregnant couples about birth, pain relief, active birth positions, waterbirth, relaxation, Hypnobirth techniques, breastfeeding, settling babies and the practical realities of becoming parents.
For twelve years, I also facilitated Active Birth and Baby Care Courses associated with the Royal Hospital for Women, helping couples prepare for Birth Centre births.
At one point, a friend and I sat down and tried to calculate how many couples I had taught.
The number was astonishing.
More than 10,000 couples.
I laughed when I saw the figure.
How had that happened?
But then I thought about all those evenings and weekends, all those couples sitting in front of me, all those questions, all those birth stories and all those babies.
Perhaps it wasn't so surprising after all.
The lessons between the births
Working within maternity settings taught me another important lesson.
I wasn't a midwife, and I have never claimed to be one.
But I was fortunate enough to have several experienced maternity professionals take an interest in me and share their knowledge.
The Birth Centre midwives knew me well, partly because I had given birth there myself.
They would sometimes take me under their wing.
After a birth, they might encourage me to give the new parents some quiet time together, and I would sit with them and talk through what had happened.
I asked questions.
Lots of questions.
How could I have helped more?
What comfort measure might have been useful?
What could I have done differently?
What had I missed?
What could I learn from this birth that might help the next woman?
And I didn't only ask the professionals.
I asked the women themselves.
I wanted to know how they had experienced my support.
That habit of reflection became one of the foundations of my professional life.
Every birth had something to teach me.
A career built on curiosity
One of the things I have learned over the decades is that you never stop learning.
I have continued to undertake education in areas ranging from communication and workplace training to assessment, management and business.
There is always another course.
Another book.
Another conversation.
Another woman with a story you have never heard before.
Another situation that makes you think:
“What can I learn from this?”
I believe that curiosity is one of the greatest gifts a professional can have.
It keeps us humble.
It keeps us growing.
And it reminds us that no matter how much experience we have, there is always more to understand.
What I have come to believe about women
Perhaps the greatest lesson of all has come from the women themselves.
I have watched women who were frightened become courageous.
I have watched women who doubted themselves discover strength they didn't know they possessed.
I have watched partners arrive unsure of what to do and gradually become confident, loving supporters.
I have watched couples become parents.
And I have watched women transform.
Birth has taught me that women are extraordinarily resilient.
Sometimes they don't know how strong they are until they have been asked to find that strength.
There was an old saying in one of the mothers' groups I knew:
“I've given birth naturally. I can do anything.”
I have thought about that sentence many times throughout my life.
Because perhaps it isn't really about whether a birth is natural or medical, easy or difficult.
Perhaps the deeper message is this:
“I discovered something about myself that I didn't know was there.”
That is the part of birth that continues to inspire me.
Why I became a doula trainer
After decades of teaching, attending births, listening to women and learning alongside midwives and other maternity professionals, I eventually realised that I had accumulated something valuable.
Experience.
Not just theoretical knowledge.
Not just a certificate.
But thousands of hours of listening, observing, reflecting, supporting and learning.
I wanted to pass that knowledge on.
I wanted other women to have the opportunity to become the kind of support person I had valued so deeply during my own births.
And so my Birth and Post Natal Doula training evolved from that lifetime of experience.
It wasn't created overnight.
It grew organically from almost four decades of being present with women and families.
It grew from the Birth Centre.
From homebirth.
From hospitals.
From classrooms.
From my own two sons.
From my mother.
From the midwives who generously shared their wisdom with me.
From the women who trusted me enough to tell me their stories.
And from every birth that left me asking:
“What more could I have done?”
That question still matters to me.
Passing the flame forward
Today, what gives me perhaps the greatest satisfaction is seeing another generation of women discover their own ability to support others.
I want my students to understand that being a doula is much more than learning a collection of comfort measures.
It is about presence.
It is about listening.
It is about knowing when to speak and when to be quiet.
It is about supporting the woman without taking over.
It is about supporting her partner too.
It is about knowing your boundaries, respecting the role of midwives and doctors, continuing to learn and having the humility to say when something is outside your scope.
And above all, it is about remembering that every woman deserves to be treated with dignity, respect and kindness.
I have spent much of my life learning from women.
Now I have the privilege of helping other women learn too.
That feels like a beautiful continuation of the journey.
The little girl who listened to her mother's birth story became the young woman who wanted to understand birth.
The young mother who searched for knowledge became a childbirth educator.
The educator became a doula.
The doula became a trainer.
And the trainer now has the privilege of watching a new generation carry that knowledge forward.
I sometimes think about all the women whose hands I have held, all the babies I have watched being born, all the partners I have reassured, all the students I have taught and all the stories I have been trusted to hear.
It is a lot of lives.
A lot of moments.
A lot of memories.
And I feel incredibly lucky.
Because birth has given me far more than a career.
It has given me a life's work.
It has given me friendships, mentors, students and an extraordinary connection with women.
And it has taught me, again and again, that when we share knowledge, encouragement and experience with one another, we make the journey a little less frightening for the woman who comes after us.
That, perhaps, is the greatest gift we can give.
To learn.
To share.
To support.
And to keep passing the flame forward.
