I'm Jen
I have been caring for women in birth and motherhood since 2007. I still find it remarkable and learn something new every time.
What I trained in
I started as a doula in 2007, supporting women with my heart and hands, learning how to be with them during birth. I was taught so much by witnessing and responding, and by building the relationships that created the scaffolding for that time together. I have woven birth education and pregnancy circles throughout my career in some form or another. I finished my Bachelor of Midwifery in 2014.
Since then I've worked across hospitals and community settings. I've been a Clinical Midwifery Specialist, a homebirth mentor, and a caseload midwife at the Royal Hospital for Women. I studied pharmacology and hold prescribing rights, and I'm endorsed, which means Medicare rebates apply to appointments with me.
In 2023 I moved into private practice.
Why I left the system I trained in
Every woman has the right to her own midwife, someone who sees her and cares for her.
I didn't leave because the care is bad. Australian maternity care is clinically sound and the people in it are working hard.
I left because for a system to function safely it needs cohesion, norms and processes, and those are manifest as policies and procedures. Individualised care takes time, and it rarely follows a set pace that is the same as everyone else's.
The other reason is that I believe in midwifery care. Every woman has the right to her own midwife, someone who sees her and cares for her, in addition to whatever other resources and care she wants or needs. I have been cared for by midwives. I know what it is to be seen through this transformation.
Education, information and time for reflection are built into every offering. It is no good giving you a handout or a list of things to do if you don't understand it, or yourself. Having a baby is a deeply personal experience. Reducing it to a mechanical process of growing a baby and getting it out, with birth as a means to an end, takes something very precious away from women, from mothers, and from our community as a whole.
The other half of the work
I run circles and rites of passage work alongside the clinical practice, knowing that birth doesn't happen in a silo. It sits in relation to all the stages of a woman's life, from menarche through to menopause.
How I make sense of the world is shaped by Kabbalah, by shamanic womancraft, and by observing and living within the cycles of nature. Beneath all of it is a belief that people want to do acts of goodness and kindness, and that each of us has a responsibility to create positive change and care for each other within our own sphere of influence.
A woman in her first pregnancy, a girl having her first period, a woman moving into menopause, a woman making sense of a birth that went badly, are all doing a version of the same thing. Something is changing and she doesn't yet know who she'll be on the other side of it. What helps is information, time, and not being alone in it. That's true whether we're doing a blood test or sitting in a circle.
The rest of it
I live in the lower Blue Mountains and work between there and Paddington, where I co-run The Gathering Space with Anna-Maria Boelskov.
Mothering has taught me more about this work than any course I've done. I am blessed with five daughters, who have encouraged me to help build a better world for the women and mothers they will become.