I came to the birth world in 2019, when my body’s hormones were asking me to find out more about it. Everything I’d picked up in my twenties had a flavour of fear. Fear of pain, fear of damage to my body, fear of goop and blood and needles.

Birth stories in mainstream media always left me very uncomfortable. The way the birthing people were treated just seemed wrong. There was a lot of shouting, telling not asking, and a lack of consent and agency. This woke me up to the medicalisation of birth, and the institutional violence perpetuated in clinical settings.

So I dug a little deeper. And I found stories of joy, and people trusting in their own bodies. Stories of people giving birth at home, by the fire, unassisted, riding their contractions like waves and catching their babies in their own arms.

And beyond that, transcendence. With birth being a portal to another realm, where they go to meet their baby and bring them Earth-side. Nothing like the movies, with people lying on their backs in hospital gowns under bright lights with doctors yelling at them to push.

It sounded life changing. Cosmic. Earth shattering. Wonderful. (No pressure, right?!).

The amount of hope and beauty I found led me to training as a birth doula, to support birthing people and new families in this extraordinary transition.