Creating a one-stop hub for holistic maternal support
Interview with Kathryn Stoneman
I chat with Kathryn Stoneman, a postpartum doula who launched her business during COVID and later co-founded the Village Collective, a hub where 14 practitioners support women from preconception to postpartum. Kathryn shares her journey across Australia and the UK, the joys and challenges of running a multi-practitioner space, and her vision for bringing rituals, nourishment, and community back to motherhood.
Listen Now
About Kathryn
Kathryn is here to support mothers through their journey into motherhood from pregnancy and birth into postpartum. She helps women build knowledge, confidence, and trust in their intuition for birth while nurturing and nourishing them as they adjust to life with their newborn. Kathryn is also the co-founder of The Village Collective in Ettalong Beach, a calm and welcoming hub offering courses, gatherings and home to Allied Health Professionals and expert practitioners specialising in preconception, pregnancy, and postpartum support.
Reach out to Kathryn here: https://www.mammanurture.com/
We explore the following questions:
What was happening in your life when you trained with Newborn Mothers in 2020, and what made you want to get involved with the postpartum renaissance?
Did you have any hesitations or concerns when you began this work, or did it all feel quite natural?
Were there particular supports or decisions that helped you get started so smoothly?
You moved countries twice in the last five years. Can you tell us about those experiences and why you made those decisions?
What differences did you notice between birth culture in the UK and in Australia?
Was postpartum care different in the UK, and in what ways?
When you returned to Australia, what helped you re-establish your business so easily?
Can you tell us about the idea behind the Village Collective and how it began?
What challenges or logistical considerations came with opening a motherhood hub?
How did you go about finding and inviting practitioners to join your space?
How do you manage scheduling and room use now that you have so many practitioners?
Do you see yourself hiring a studio manager or admin support as the Collective continues to grow?
What inspires your vision for expanding to more locations?
What do you hope postpartum hubs might look like in the future, especially with potential government support?
What does the future look like for you personally, for Mamma Nurture, and for the Village Collective?
Do you have any final thoughts for listeners who may be dreaming of creating their own version of a village or motherhood hub?
If you love this podcast please subscribe leave a 5-star rating and review wherever you listen!
Transcript
Julia Jones:
Hello and welcome to Newborn Mothers. Today I'm speaking to Kathryn Stoneman, who is a graduate of mine from many years ago. You joined the Collective in 2020 and you did the breastfeeding course. Now those courses, if people are listening in 2025 or 2026, have been upgraded and combined, but you did them a long time ago during those COVID years. So Kathryn, let's go back to the very beginning. What was going on for you at that time in your life and what made you want to get involved with the postpartum renaissance?
Kathryn Stoneman:
Well, first of all, thanks for having me on. I'm so excited to talk to you. It's kind of like a full circle moment for me, so I'm so excited. I was in my second postpartum, so I'd had my daughter and then I'd had my second son and he brought a lot up for me. And I think I was in that stage where I really leant into the changes that come when you become a mother. I really felt that when you birth a baby, we do birth a new version of yourself and come six months, I was kind of getting this feel to change the direction in my work and I was doing a lot of meditating and the word doula just came up to me. And I'd never heard of a doula before, I just knew that I really wanted to work with mothers. And then I found your podcast, I found you, Julia, and I was like, this is it. This is what I've been put on this earth to do. And I ran straight into the training when my son was still six months. Six months later I had my website, everything was up and running, and within the first couple of months of opening my business, I was fully booked for the year. And that's when I realised, yep, I have really found my life's calling.
Julia Jones:
Oh, I love hearing that.
Kathryn Stoneman:
So special. Everything just fell into place. It was easy. And that's when you know that you're on the right path.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I love that. It all just kind of flowed for you and felt so good. Were there any doubts? I mean, it doesn't sound like you even paused to think, but were there hesitations or concerns at the time?
Kathryn Stoneman:
Not at all. Like my husband was really supportive and I think that really helped. I invested in someone doing my branding for me, getting my logo right. So that was kind of out of my genius zone. And then my husband helped me with developing my website, you know, my socials and it all just landed really easy. And when I just put it out there into the world and said, this is what I'm doing and spoke to everybody in my community, the mums just started coming in and the postpartum work just started and it all just felt so right. From that first visit, I just knew nurturing and nourishing the mother was exactly what I needed to be doing. And taking my experience from my first daughter and using my knowledge as a mother and a second-time mother myself, you know, offering support and advice when needed, also just felt really good.
Julia Jones:
Now a lot's changed over the last five years because you had another baby and moved countries twice.
Kathryn Stoneman:
Yeah. Yeah.
Julia Jones:
You want to tell us about those little detours along the way?
Kathryn Stoneman:
So it was one of the hardest decisions, when COVID was lifted. None of my family in the UK had met my son and my husband's also from the UK so we made the really big decision to up and move everything from our lovely home in the Central Coast, in Sydney, all the way back to the UK. I was pregnant. I think we arrived back in the UK when I was around 23, 24 weeks pregnant, to start family life again. And actually leaving my business was really hard. I had grown it and I was flourishing and I was getting clients and I was saying no. And I had trained as a birth doula in between this just before we left as well. So I was turning down clients. I think I turned down a twin birth, which still upsets me so much because I was like, I'm sorry, I'm leaving the country!
But for our family, that was the right decision at the time. So yeah, we headed back to the uk. We did a couple years in the UK and I started my business Mamma Nurture back in the UK as well. And it was a little slower because I was still getting used to how everything worked back in the UK and obviously just having a baby, I was able to attend a couple of births and do some postpartum work, and learning how the UK run birth as well. It's very mother-led, they're very hands off. And experiencing that for myself, home birth is normally your first option. So I actually learned so much from having that time within my work back in the UK but we then decided that the UK wasn't quite right for us and our family, so we moved again back to the Central Coast and we've been back here now nearly two and a half years.
And, you know, I made the announcement on the socials, Hey everybody, I'm moving back to the Central Coast. And yeah, it was like we had never left. And I was so lucky because my business was quite well established before we left. I came back and it was like I had never left. All the first-time mums I had supported were having second babies. I think I put out an email saying, I'm back, you know, my books are open. And within a couple of weeks I was booked up for the next couple of months, which was just incredible. I felt very lucky that people still remembered me and the work that I was doing before I left.
Julia Jones:
I love it. That's beautiful. You mentioned in there that you noticed some differences in birth, the culture of birth in the UK compared to Australia. What about postpartum? Was that different there too?
Kathryn Stoneman:
I think I only managed to support one, oh no, two women. So maybe people were a bit more aware about the fourth trimester, I think maybe it was mentioned more in birth education, you know, from the hospital as well. I feel sometimes here they're not allowed to share businesses, you know, as a birth doula, they're not allowed to make recommendations. In the UK it was a lot more fluid and there were more community groups and places for mums to gather. There was more of a movement for that, bringing mums along for the journey. So more conversations were happening. It was not too different come postpartum, but I could see a real difference in birth.
Julia Jones:
It's really interesting. I always just like to check in on those kind of things. So you came back and it sounds like you just hit the ground running straight back into being a fully booked birth and postpartum doula. You decided to do something new. So tell us about your latest project.
Kathryn Stoneman:
I find when I birth each baby, I birth this new project, this other new baby. Obviously with my middle son, it was Mamma Nurture and with my last son who I had in the UK. But I had been marinating this idea, to have like a motherhood hub, I'm going to call it, where a woman can go and be supported throughout her whole journey from preconception all the way to postpartum and beyond. And me and a girlfriend back in the UK were texting each other and she had the exact same idea and she was like, I wish you were here. And I was like, I know. And I was starting to kind of look at places to open this motherhood hub in the UK. This idea was really being birthed after I had birthed Jude, my third son.
So then when we made the decision to move back, literally Harriet, the co-founder with me of the Village Collective, she's like, we're doing it. And I was like, I've just landed back in the country, give me some time. But yeah, we found the right spot and we have opened the Village Collective and it's a studio space and two practitioner rooms, and we have actually 14 practitioners on board who, and myself and Harriet who all support women through holistic ways, from fertility to postpartum and beyond. So we've got women's health, physio, naturopath, nutritionist, dietitian, we've got some reiki healers, we have got a massage therapist, acne needling. Who else have we got? Oh yeah, we've got a psychologist, and a counsellor as well. So we've just got this group of incredible women. And we all work out of this space that I run and it's amazing and it's so fun.
Julia Jones:
I want to know more about this because I feel like this is something my students tell me a lot is a dream for them. A lot of my students start out doing in-home postpartum care because it's sort of a lower barrier to entry. You don't need to commit to a venue and rent and you know, it's kind of like bring all the other practitioners along. But a lot of people tell me that in the future they would love to set up something like that. So can you share a little bit about the challenges and like the logistics of running a space like that?
Kathryn Stoneman:
It's a lot of hard work and because I have Mamma Nurture, which is my full-time job and the Village Collective, it's kind of like that passion project. Harry and I pour our heart and soul into the Village Collective and we are working in the evenings. It sometimes takes that time away from the kids or once the kids are in bed, I'm up, I'm updating websites, I'm putting events on. So I know right now we're in the trenches with it, we’re really driving it to get that momentum. We're putting our own resources in it. We're finding women to come along the way. We are plugging away with marketing. We opened last July, so we're just over a year old and momentum has really started to gather now the sun shines out and it's summer here, everything's getting booked up again and more practitioners are wanting to come on board.
But it's really hard work and it's a financial commitment as well. Because like you say, you have got that rent to pay every single week. And I think the best thing that Harriet and I did when we started it is before we even opened the doors, we looked at the incredible women who were working in the space in our area and we went to them and said, we have this, would you like to come join us? And luckily we got to literally handpick these incredible women who are now practitioners and they were on board from the moment we opened our doors. And that is what has made the huge difference in order for it to have that success.
Julia Jones:
So when you say you have, did you say 14 practitioners?
Kathryn Stoneman:
Yeah. We didn't start with 14.
Julia Jones:
Were they just taking like one day a week each or something?
Kathryn Stoneman:
We are super flexible with them. So the idea is if you come on board as a practitioner, we want to make sure that when you offer your services, you are in the space. So we are finding that practitioners do about two days a month and then we've just got a calendar and they've got their set days. They rock up on their set days. Some of them have studio space as well and hold workshops and it is a juggle with the calendar now that we are growing. We only started with seven practitioners. So now we are growing, we are kind of running out of space a little bit, which is a good place to be. We'll see where next year takes us, but the calendar juggle is real.
Julia Jones:
Yeah, I love it though. I mean, like you're saying, these are all good problems to have. There's obviously a lot of demand and is the plan in the future, eventually you'd be able to have some kind of a studio manager and admin kind of role who could do a lot of the work that it sounds like you are doing right now?
Kathryn Stoneman:
That would be so nice. I would love to be able to invest in that. So what we're doing now is everything that we make from the Village collective, we invest back in marketing. We do free events, we do community events, you know, we do a mother's group and if there is a mum who, you know, can't pay, we pay it forward as much as we can. But as we grow to be able to have someone to take all the admin and the calendar side of it, oh gosh, that would be so good.
Julia Jones:
And I know you've also hinted at saying you'd like to open more locations as well.
Kathryn Stoneman:
This work is needed. It’s funny that you say some of your students, it's their plan because I feel like we are called to bring back that village and that's what it's all about. Especially after experiencing having a baby in COVID and being really low and being really alone. We need to bring back that village and the only people who are going to do it are mothers themselves. So my partner Harriet, she's a mum of three boys. We are bringing all that passion and that experience and what we wish we had into that space.
Julia Jones:
I love it. It's so much how a lot of the time this work works is we as mothers have our own experience and go like less of that, more of that, let's make this better for the next mum. So I always love hearing that. Thank you for sharing so much about that. I asked some quite detailed and specific questions there, but I just know I'll have a lot of listeners who are like, that's exactly what I've had in my mind to do.
My next question is, tell me about the future. What is in the future for, well, all versions of you, Kathryn, as the woman and the mother, but also, for Mamma Nurture and for the Village Collective, what does the next 10 years look like?
Kathryn Stoneman:
I have got my beautiful three children, so that's it on the child front. As much as I would like one more, I have realised, no, let's be sensible. Your life is full, three is enough. Yes. And I'm very lucky, in terms of Mamma Nurture, I am a birth and postpartum doula. But the postpartum, because it was my original passion with you, Julia, I'm leaning into more of that work because I constantly see how important it is and what I want to bring in is more rituals, more ceremony, more nourishing food and bring that into the postpartum. We are losing all of these beautiful cultural rituals from around the world, and there's a reason why they've been there for thousands of years and we are losing them.
I want to travel, and learning these beautiful ceremonies and rituals like closing of the bones. I've just done Abhyanga massage training, you know, the proper closing of the bones. I want to be able to learn those from the women who are doing them themselves out in those cultures and bring them back and bring them in and weave them. I know a lot of cultures’ postpartum looks very different to how our postpartums look, but what can we borrow and bring into our postpartum to really ensure that the mothers are nurtured and nourished and they come out of their fourth trimester feeling really nourished, not depleted. So travel is definitely in my future and learning.
Julia Jones:
I see you bringing people over, too. Like if you go and meet some interesting people and learn some interesting things, you bring them back to the village and share that with everyone.
Kathryn Stoneman:
Oh my gosh. Can you imagine? I'm writing that down. That's a good one. I love it. Can you imagine, oh, the workshops, like proper and, you know, inspiring our local birth keepers, you know, and our birth workers around here, bringing them together, to make sure that we are all working as one and providing these beautiful offerings to women.
And my daughter is super interested in birth and postpartum as well, so she's so on for coming along the journey. She's like this little mini-me. So I'm definitely going to be taking her travelling with me and then for the Village Collective for me and Harriet, we have seen that this concept works and we want to be able to support women not just on the Central Coast. So who knows where that might take us. But we are in it for the long run and we can't wait to see where that concept and the Village Collective takes us next.
Julia Jones:
I love it. You know, one of my longer-term goals is more government funding for postpartum care. I know that at the moment the government's putting a lot of money into endometriosis hubs and I kind of think what you are talking about, wouldn't it be great if the government just put these postpartum hubs all around Australia and to be honest, it's like it could be a balance between private and public business, whereas if they just put the venue up and private businesses lease the space or you know, psychologists and so on who get rebates, but having it all together under one roof is so beautiful. So I can really see why that is something that would make such a difference in the lives of mothers just being able to go to one place. Because as a mum you don't always know, am I experiencing a breastfeeding problem or is my baby struggling to sleep or is it my mental health? I don't know which specialist I need to see. So if you can go to one place and they're all there, you might see the psych and they say, I actually think the lactation consultant's going to really be able to help you right now. Go next door.
Kathryn Stoneman:
Exactly. And that's exactly what it is. We all work collaboratively so the women feels really held. Because all of our values are the same. And that has happened so many times. Like they come for a lactation problem, but actually they, you know, them and their baby both need to see body workers. Okay, great, well I know so-and-so and she's in on Fridays, and then the woman's like, what here? And we're like, yep. So then word-of-mouth for us is huge because the woman has that real wholehearted held experience. She's obviously, she tells all her friends and, you know, that works.
Julia Jones:
And that becomes the first place that every mom goes when she's like, I'm not sure what I need, but I need a community. I need support. It'll all be there.
Kathryn Stoneman:
Yep. And then they find us through different ways as well. Because we do a playgroup on Mondays and Thursdays, so women rock up for the playgroup and then they're like, oh, you've got these two rooms here full of practitioners I didn't realise. And then when they have another baby, we are there for them from the start. If the government was able to even offer grants that we could apply for, you know, because the hard work is finding that space, setting it up, and then for everybody to work collectively, you kind of need a couple of people to hold that space.
Julia Jones:
Yeah.
Kathryn Stoneman:
So having grants that we could apply for…
Julia Jones:
Bit of long-term commitment as well, because it's hard when you are sort of paying month to month. If you knew you just had five years locked in, you could really step back and grow things and run things much more strategically. But when you're always wondering what's going to happen in three months time or a year's time, it's much harder to build that consistency and that village, of really reliable support, which is really what's needed.
Kathryn Stoneman:
Yeah. Like evensubsidising room rent, like the rent of a building, that would be super helpful because that's the biggest outlay, right? Is the cost of rent.
Julia Jones:
What a fascinating chat. Kathryn, thank you so much for sharing. Is there anything else you want to share? We'll send people your websites. You're on the Central Coast in Sydney. People can find you at Mamma Nurture and the Village Collective and we'll put those links up. And is there any kinda last sort of things you want to share?
Kathryn Stoneman:
If anybody does come to the Central Coast, make sure you pop in and say hi to us all at the Village Collective. I'd love to show you round and show you what we're doing. All your listeners, if you're working in the postpartum or birthing space, keep that passion and that drive because that's what keeps me going and constant training and being excited by how we can support women in the future.
Julia Jones:
Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing.
