My passion for childbirth education

Before I ever gave birth, I thought I had a pretty solid understanding of how it all worked. I was a practicing veterinarian, and in my world, animals generally birth efficiently and instinctively. Most of the mothers I knew seemed to have done the same. So I assumed human birth would follow a similar pattern: straightforward, intuitive, nothing much to prepare for.

I did the standard hospital antenatal classes, went to a couple of prenatal yoga sessions, and figured that was enough. I didn’t dive deeper, didn’t question much, and didn’t realise how little I actually knew.

Then labour began — and my baby turned posterior when my waters broke (but I didn’t know the terminology at the time, or the implications). Hours passed, progress stalled, and despite all my hopes for a physiological birth, I ended up in theatre with an unwanted caesarean. What followed was a blur of postnatal depression, difficulty bonding, and breastfeeding challenges that left me feeling like I had somehow failed at the very thing I thought should come most naturally.

In the fog of those early months, I found an online Vaginal Birth After Caesarean (VBAC) support group. Suddenly I wasn’t alone. Story after story echoed my own: women entering their first births with minimal preparation, little understanding of their options, and a belief that birth would simply “happen.” Instead, many found themselves swept into the cascade of intervention — sometimes necessary, sometimes only entered into out of fear, pain or lack of informed consent — and left processing trauma they never expected.

That community opened my eyes. It’s not that intervention is the enemy; I’m deeply grateful to live in a country where lifesaving care is readily available. And my fourth child and I would be incredibly unlikely to have survived if it weren’t for that very care (a long story for another day). It’s just that so many of us walk in blind. We don’t know how birth physiology works, why positioning matters or how to influence it, how to advocate for ourselves, or how to navigate the healthcare system with any confidence. A little education before that first birth could have changed so much for me - maybe the outcome, or maybe not - but the experience, the sense of agency, and the emotional aftermath might all have been so different.

That realisation lit a fire in me.

I didn’t want other women to keep learning these lessons the hard way. I didn’t want them to feel blindsided, disempowered, or alone. I wanted them to understand their bodies, their choices, the many paths a positive birth can take and the unexpected strength that may be found when things don’t go according to plan (preference!) – if only you know where to look for it. And I wanted to help prevent the long‑lasting ripple effects that a traumatic birth can leave in its wake.

That’s where my passion for childbirth education began — in the gap between what I thought I knew and what I desperately needed to know. In the space where my own story cracked open and made room for something new: a commitment to helping women enter birth informed, supported, and empowered.

If sharing what I’ve learned spares even one woman from feeling the way I did, then every hour spent teaching, studying, and holding space is time well spent. That intention became the seed for my first online yoga course, Pre‑natal Presence. The same desire then gave rise to the concepts for even earlier education in Pre-conception Peace, and ongoing support for recovery in Post-natal Poise.

My hope is that these offerings help women build a deep confidence in both body and mind—confidence that supports them to achieve empowered, meaningful, loving and calm births, and forms a steady foundation to not only survive the transition into motherhood, but to truly thrive.