About Lacey Barratt
Melbourne Birth Photographer, Videographer & Doula
Lacey Barratt is a boundary-pushing, multi award-winning birth photographer (both nationally and internationally), mentor, and doula who invites you to witness birth, and yourself, through a radically honest lens. With over a decade of experience holding space for hundreds of births, she fuses documentary storytelling with deep, embodied mentorship to help creatives, birth workers, and visionaries reclaim their power.
Known for her unfiltered presence and fierce reverence for autonomy, Lacey teaches that birth is not just an event. It’s a portal. And how you walk through it shapes everything.
She doesn’t just support you at the threshold. She walks with you through every unraveling, every expansion, and every reclamation.
At the core of her practice is the belief that birth is the centrefold of all creation. And the same energy that brings life into the world lives inside your art, your business, your relationships, and your decisions. Whether you’re pregnant or simply becoming, this is where you come to remember that your body, your voice, and your story are sacred.
Lacey lives in Australia with her wild family, a few too many houseplants, and an ever-growing collection of unfiltered conversations. She is the directory of International Association of Professional Birth Photographers and Founder of BIrth Photographer of the Year. She’s also an experienced judge, judging multiple national and international photography competitions including Australian Photographic Prize, (formerly) Australian Institute of Professional Photographers both nationally and statewide, ACM, and more. She’s here for the depth. The grief. The growth. The rage and the rebirth.
Redefining Doula Support
What I love most about how I work is that my doula support isn’t bound by location—or even time. You don’t need me physically at your birth to feel held. I support clients across the globe because this work is deeper than presence—it’s about presence of mind, body, and energy.
When you book my Circle package, you get 12 months of continuous support. That could mean six months postpartum care if we begin at 20 weeks. I don’t operate on appointments; I operate in alignment with you, your needs, and your unfolding. You have 24/7 access to me. Our conversations are not transactional. They’re transformative.
This is continuity of care, redefined.
You’ll never be billed for going over time, or nudged toward hiring a postpartum doula because I’ve “timed out.” Unless you want physical, in-home support, my scope extends well beyond a traditional model.
Birth is forever. Postpartum is forever. And at 56, you’ll still be postpartum. You’ll still be evolving. That’s where I come in. I’m not here to just get you through labour. I’m here to walk beside you through life.
My journey began when I gave birth to my first son. With only three photos to show for it, I felt deep, aching regret. That moment led me to the question that’s guided my entire path: why?
And I’ve been following that question ever since. Into photography, into birthwork, and into this sacred, rebellious form of care.
The Question That Changed It All
Why did I feel such immense regret about not documenting my son’s birth? Why did that grief deepen with my second? Why was I mourning the lack of memory?
The absence of documentation was more than missing photos. It was missing myself. Missing the power I held, the transformation I moved through, and the truth of my experience. I was left with fragments. And that fragmentation led me down a path of unravelling, remembering, and rebuilding.
Every question I asked opened another layer: Why do we silence our stories? Why are we told that being witnessed in our most powerful moments is somehow being seen at our worst? Why do we only begin to understand the magnitude of birth in hindsight?
That curiosity pulled me into the depths of self-inquiry, and ultimately, into forgiveness—of myself, of the systems that failed me, of the silence I had inherited. With each birth I documented (mine and others’), I reclaimed something I didn’t know I had lost.
I watched the narrative shift not just in me, but in my partner. What began as, “I didn’t want to see you like that,” transformed into, “Look how powerful you are.” This is the potential of being truly seen.
And that’s when I knew: the traditional definition of “doula” didn’t fit. Not for the way I show up. Not for the depth I hold. Not for the transformation I live and breathe with you.
Yes, I resonate with being a doula. But I also resist the confines of what that title has come to mean in its most clinical or conventional form. I sit in both truths. I embody the in-between. My work doesn’t exist in a scope. It exists in relationship.
