The roller coaster of emotions you feel while holding your first child is an experience like no other.

The fear, the tears, the love, and the sheer exhaustion — that cocktail of emotions came flowing back to me as I spoke to new mothers in Timor-Leste.

Hearing their stories, I remembered how overwhelmed you can feel by the immense responsibility of keeping this tiny being alive.

That feeling can be especially overpowering if you are recovering from a traumatic birthing experience, or you feel alone and unsupported, or your baby is small and struggling to feed. Unfortunately, this is the case for many of the women in Timor-Leste’s remote villages.

I met four-month-old Denilcia, her mother Susi and grandmother Maria in their tiny cement brick home in the mountains of Liquicia District.

Like 70 per cent of people in Timor-Leste, their family lives in a small remote village that is almost entirely reliant on small, subsistence farms.

To reach their village from the capital, Dili, we had to drive on a one-way, muddy road that weaved dangerously through the mountains. Recent rains had washed away the track, which made our journey take four hours and made every corner feel like a near-death experience.

When we arrived, I was struck by the beauty of the village and the loving environment Denilcia’s family had created.

The roof of the house is iron, they do not have running water, they cook food outside, the floors are concrete and they have basic furnishings: a table, some plastic chairs, wooden beds and mosquito nets. But their house is filled with love. They are a very close and supportive family; they have lived through trauma.

Over a third of the population of Timor-Leste, including thousands of mothers, grandmothers and caregivers, died during the Indonesia’s 24-year occupation, which ended in 1999.