THE first sign that Deborah Strong was in trouble was not the two bottles of breast milk sitting beside her more than two decades ago.
It was her reflection.
She was still wearing the previous day’s clothes. Her hair had not been brushed. She had been awake, feeding and expressing milk, until the days and nights had begun to blur into one long stretch of motherhood.
Her mother, Caroline, had come to check on her. She took one look at her daughter and said: “Deb this is not sustainable. You can’t continue like this.”
Strong had been home two weeks with her first baby, Ella. She had read everything she could about breastfeeding during pregnancy and thought she was prepared.
But motherhood had presented her with a problem no book had been able to solve. Her daughter had been given a bottle at hospital, and immediately afterwards struggled to return to the breast. Strong had plenty of milk, but her baby could not settle into breastfeeding.
The routine was exhausting. She would offer the breast, try again, eventually give the baby expressed milk in a bottle, settle her, then wait for her to sleep so she could pump again. By the time she finished, the baby was almost ready to wake.
“You become sleep-deprived very very quickly in a more urgent way,” she recalls
For two weeks, Strong kept going. Her mother noticed what she had failed to notice herself: she was exhausted.
Then came the phone call
As luck would have it, there was a woman who had recently arrived in Fiji, specialised in breastfeeding support. Strong’s mum recommended the lady – Carolyn Tranter, the founder of Doula Beginnings and Ocean’s only DONA International-arpproved doula trainer.
Tranter eventually visited. Rather than taking over, she watched.
“Carry on as if I’m not here. I’m going to just observe and see what could be, and what and where we could improve things but you do what you are doing and then I’ll know what to do,” she told me.
“I had read about different breastfeeding positions and tried them all. Cradle, cross-cradle, side-lying, football and reclining. Nothing seemed to work.”
But the woman watching could see what the new mum could not. Strong had established breastfeeding, and her milk was flowing quickly. Her baby was struggling with the speed of it.
It was a small but important lesson. For three days they worked together until Strong’s daughter was breastfeeding normally again.
The bottles and breast pump no longer dictated the routine. Strong was feeding her daughter herself, every two hours, and sleeping more. She had regained something almost as important as the ability to breastfeed: confidence. And then she asked the woman who had helped her to teach her what she knew.
“I told Carolyn, whatever this is can you please show me because I am so lucky you stopped at my mum’s office. There are people in my country who need this service and I would I’d love to learn it so I can help as many women as I can.”
That request, made in the aftermath of her own difficult start to motherhood, set Strong on a path she has followed for 26 years.
From a mother’s experience
to a life’s work
Strong’s journey into doula work did not begin with a business plan.
It began with gratitude. She understood that not every woman had what she had. She had her mother. She had family and a community around her. But what about the woman who had none of those things?
Strong remembers asking herself what happened to women who were going from house to house, had no family support, no income and no money for alternatives when breastfeeding (and both prenatal and post-nala care) became difficult.
That question stayed with her.
She began training with Carolyn Tranter, accompanying her to clients, observing her work and learning along the way.
Her first experience as a trainee came close to home when she helped support her own sister during pregnancy and the birth of her nephew.
It was the beginning of a role that would become a lifetime commitment.
What exactly does a doula do?
The word doula is still unfamiliar to many people in Fiji.
Strong describes it simply as: “A doula is a woman in service to women in labour.”
“The doula is not there to control the birth but to provide support.
“Birth can change direction quickly. Medical intervention may become necessary. A woman’s carefully imagined birth may not happen the way she hoped.”
But even when circumstances change, she should not feel powerless.
“The doula helps a woman understand what is happening and supports her as she makes her way through it.”
For Strong, doula care begins well before labour.
Pregnancy is a long period of preparation, yet women may only have limited opportunities to discuss what is happening to them between clinical appointments.
A doula can help explain the changes taking place month by month, the growth of the baby, the role of amniotic fluid, possible challenges and what a woman can expect.
Questions that may have been sitting in a woman’s head since her last clinic visit can finally be asked. And if the question is medical, the doula knows where the boundary lies.
“Doulas are not medical professionals,” says Strong, “our role is informational, educational, physical and emotional”.
They help women understand information and recognise when something requires medical attention.
Twenty-six years of giving back
For most of those 26 years, Strong was not running a business. She was volunteering. She worked other jobs to support herself finanly while doing demanding doula work for free.
Her professional background was in administration, office management, logistics and secretarial work. She spent time in computer programming and hardware, worked for The Fiji Times looking after Kaila newspaper, ran her own catering company and worked for Digicel as a corporate care manager. Through all these jobs, the doula work remained the thread that kept returning.
She would start, then stop, then start again. COVID-19 gave her time to reconsider the work and think about turning it into a proper business. Then her father became ill. For two years she cared for him until his passing. This time, she says, she is going full force.
Pacific Doula Services PTE Limited, based in Suva, is now the business through which she provides perinatal support. But the commercial side of the work does not erase where it came from.
After more than two decades, Strong has seen how much a woman can carry quietly. Her own breastfeeding experience showed her how quickly exhaustion can strip away confidence. It also taught her that sometimes the most valuable support is not another instruction.
That is why Strong is cautious about presenting doulas as people who arrive with all the answers.
“Our job is not to replace the medical team. It is to stand alongside it, while also standing alongside the mother.”
She believes Fiji needs dedicated maternity services rather than treating maternity as simply another wing within a general hospital.
Her concern comes from years of watching women navigate pregnancy and birth, often with families and communities doing their best to fill whatever gaps they can.
She is not dismissive of medical professionals. Far from it. She understands that nurses, doctors and other health workers are also working within pressures and limitations.
But she believes women need more than clinical care alone. They need information. They need someone to help them understand what is happening. And sometimes they simply need another woman in the room.
The space between the questions
Strong had prepared for motherhood. She had read and researched. She had family support. And still, when something went wrong, she found herself exhausted and unsure.
It took another woman to sit quietly and observe before the missing piece became clear.
That experience stayed with her. It is now at the heart of her work.
Strong does not promise women perfect births. She knows better than most that birth does not always follow a straight line.
What she offers is presence and support, the information to prepare. The experience to recognise when something is not working, and the confidence to ask questions, and And the reassurance that a woman does not have to navigate every uncertain moment alone.
Her daughter Ella is now an adult. The breastfeeding crisis that once left Strong standing in yesterday’s clothes, staring at herself in a window, is more than two decades behind her.
But she never forgot how it felt.
Perhaps that is why, after 26 years, she is still here. Still holding space for women.
“If you are pregnant, if you are preparing for birth, about to go to labour or if you need navigating breastfeeeding, I am here and I can help.”
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A doula in activewear helps a pregnant woman with her back pain. The expectant mother relaxes on a fitness ball while receiving a massage. Picture:naturalwomanhood.org
