Beloved Bumps

Below: Tanglin School trip to Chinatown. Right: Tanglin Class Photo with Mr John Palmer, 1997

Beloved

Bumps

Natasha Cullen has always been keen to go into medicine but when she realised that it doesn’t have as much patient contact as she would like, she decided to head in a different direction. Join us as we chat with Natasha - Tanglin alumna and founder of Beloved Bumps, a pregnancy care centre that offers prenatal and postnatal classes in Singapore.

Natasha may have only spent Year 4 and 5 at Tanglin, but she counts her memories there as one of her most favourite ones. She said, “I loved my teachers! I had Mr Palmer in Year 4 and will never forget our trip to Pulau Ubin - I had so much fun! The other most memorable moment I had from Tanglin was ‘Victorian day’ - I was made a dunce for the day and had to sit in a corner with a board, and in the playground we played with skipping ropes etc. There was so much prep work that went into it but it was probably one of my favourite days at school ever!”

Natasha would eventually relocate to Brunei and attend a boarding school in England after that. Like most young people her age, she began thinking about her dream career. She said, “I have always known that I wanted to be in medicine. I started off wanting to be a vet before moving on to wanting to be a doctor. When I was in Singapore on a holiday from boarding school, I worked with a wonderful paediatrician for my work experience and I found that there wasn’t as much patient contact as I wanted. I love talking and getting to know clients, and there was limited time to do that as a doctor. I was also struggling with chemistry at the time and started to wonder if medicine was really the right career path for me.”

A PIVOTAL MOMENT

Although she had her doubts, Natasha didn’t let it faze her. Instead she looked into different medical fields such as nursing and physiotherapy. When she stumbled across midwifery, she knew then that it was exactly what she wanted to do. Natasha applied to a three year degree in Direct Entry Midwifery at the University of Leeds and managed to get one of the very few places available.

“It was a tough course,” Natasha recalled her experience with a smile, “while most university students were on holiday, we were in placements at the hospital so you definitely have to want to do it! But I love it because I got to know clients really well. As a midwife, I make my own decisions and care plans. In the UK, if you are considered ‘low risk’ for your pregnancy, you may never see a doctor since midwives are regarded as the experts in normal birth.”

SETTING UP HER OWN BUSINESS

In 2017, Natasha moved to Singapore with her children. When she was in the UK, she had attended prenatal classes because she wanted to meet other people in her area. She had assumed that it would be just as popular in Singapore if one has no family staying in the same country but she soon realised that this was not the case.

Natasha said, “everyone seemed to be meeting people in baby classes but not before, so I set up Beloved Bumps in 2017 to help pregnant couples meet one another and deliver evidencedbased classes on labour, birth and baby. A huge part of our classes is the community you join when you come to our classes. Our clients keep in touch for years and it’s such a supportive network of families! I’m also happy to say that we have grown from six couples a month in November 2017 to around 35 now.”

WORDS OF WISDOM

Going into midwifery and setting up a business aren’t the easiest things to do in the world, so what kind of advice does Natasha have for like-minded Tanglin students or alumni? She said, “It sounds really cheesy but you need to believe you can do it. Setting up a business takes a lot of commitment as well and I had to put in a lot of time when I first started this business. The main thing is to remember that you’d always have setbacks when growing your business. People who are able to think outside the box are the ones who will succeed. If you have a business idea, start exploring what’s out there on offer currently and then formulate a plan of how you are going to get it up and running. Lastly, be brave! It definitely takes guts to start a business.” ■ It sure does, Natasha! If you want to find out more about what she does at Beloved Bumps, then visit her website at belovedbumps.sg or share it with someone with a beloved bump on the way!