According to Kate Lewis, being present during a child's birth is a time when a woman's religion and culture fade into the background and nothing else matters except for that moment.
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The 21-year-old has recently returned from a year abroad volunteering as a birth attendant with the international Christian mission organisation, Youth With A Mission.
Working alongside midwives, doctors and healthcare professionals in Uganda, India, Nepal and Cambodia has been an eye-opening experience for Ms Lewis. An emotional and rewarding experience she said she feels destined to continue.
"All of life's emotions can be presented in just one night. One moment you are experiencing euphoria and then in the next devastation," she said remembering her final shift in Cambodia.
A shift she claimed was the worst of the whole journey. But still worth every minute of it.
"In that final night we had a precious baby boy pass away and then an hour later, an amazing healthy delivery and then right towards the end of our shift, there was a complicated birth where we weren't sure whether the mum or the baby would make it."
"It was awful, but still it ended with the baby being healthy and the mother was going to be okay. Everything was presented - the high and lows of life."
Ms Lewis' qualifications as a birth attendant are not recognised in Australia, and although she looks to gaining Australian accreditation, she said for now the focus is to continue working in developing countries.
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"I feel I can be of better service working with women who don't have the funds to pay for health care. They deserve it just as much as any other woman does.
"Some things are pretty non-existent in countries like Uganda and India. The importance of patient care and education is often lacking. At times there are some risky and unacceptable practices [in birth] like fundal pressure or hitting the mother."
Ms Lewis said the team of missionary birth attendants encourage 'good practice' in the hospitals and clinics they visit.
"They might seem like small things but they are incredibly important. Like hand washing, rubber gloves, sterile equipment or skin to skin contact," she said.
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Unable to give a figure on the number of babies she saw delivered over her 12-month experience Ms Lewis said it was the first experience that really stood out in her mind that reminds her of how precious and fragile life is.
"We were in Uganda, in the middle of nowhere. A woman was in labour with her ninth child. There was no equipment except a pair of gloves and some dodgy scissors - just enough to make it sterile," she recalled.
"When the baby was born I had the privilege of passing it onto the grandmother.
"Afterwards I was standing in the corner, looking over the sleeping mother and it was then the tears started to fall.
"In this dirty environment with no privacy, a life came into the world. Life is special even if it doesn't end in the baby living - life happens."
Ms Lewis said she would like to thank the community for their support, fundraising and getting behind her to make the whole experience possible.
