Certified in NZ and USA, I provide bilingual feeding and communication supports in-person and online. My recent role in the NZ public health system complemented my growing private practice. I also enjoyed working alongside family focused, holistic healthcare professionals within the Milk and Honey Paediatrics team. Passionately supporting whānau and tamariki through those special first thousand days.

As a mother to a toddler myself, I truly understand the overwhelm, chaos and immense joy that can come along with parenthood. This transition can feel like climbing a mountain without a map or instruction manual, often figuring out what equipment and supports you'll need along the way. Add to this, feeding or communication difficulties, and your journey can quickly become an uphill battle.

My Masters research into "Lived Experiences of Mothers Interacting with their Infant", highlighted the overwhelming and often conflicting information provided through well meaning family members, friends and healthcare professionals. I recognise the impact my recommendations have on the wellbeing of your whole family as well as the emotional, physical and spiritual wellbeing of your child for years to come. While there is no manual in motherhood, I can help you navigate your child's early feeding and communication difficulties.

Let's reconnect with your intuitive understanding of your baby and ensure therapy aligns with your values along your journey.

Speech and Language Therapy has taken me to many places. Some of my foundational memories include time spent volunteering in Samoa and Tonga with amazing local teams and other health and education professionals. We supported local communities through direct intervention, seeing their most complex cases as well as providing training and uspkilling to local therapy teams working with children with disability, feeding disorders, communication impairment and more. To me, it was less about the "expert" coming in and so much more about empowering others to support their community to the best of their ability. 

As much as I passed my knowledge on, I experienced the humbling nature of working with limited resources in a community of people with passionate hearts and can do attitudes. I learnt first hand about supportive positioning and adapted seating, working alongside amazing Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy colleagues. I used commonplace objects such as lavalava, to co-create a shaded hammock, easing tension for a child with significant complex disability including hearing, vision, cognitive and physical impairment. I explored everyday, often overlooked resources in new and wonderful ways and my eyes and heart expanded with creativity and deepened awareness of how to bring "expert" wisdom and trully immerse this within my client's lived experience. I continue to practice in this way, coming to your home, using your toys or objects you have available and bringing life into the everyday. 

I spent the early years of my career dedicating myself to children with disabilities within the Special School sector, and deepened into my awareness of communication tools, feeding therapy for older children, and many varied disability diagnoses. These children taught me many things including responsive and respectful interaction, watching for micro expressions and communicating through non-verbal means. Some families now refer to me as "the baby whisperer" and while I won't deny it's a fun title, the magic lies in learning how to watch, listen and respond to your baby. You can do it too. This skill can be helpful for parents, teachers and all members of the therapy team.

I left a hospital based adult permanent role to chase my dream of working with babies and young children with feeding and communication difficulties. I have a passion for supporting breastfeeding and milk feeding dyads, particularly since having my own child. But what many people do not know is what drew me to Speech Therapy in the beginning was the support we can offer babies and their families from the start of their life. What I learnt over the last decade of working in Speech Therapy is the long lasting impact of the foundational first thousand days, and the importance of achievable, functional and efficient early therapy.