How one mum of triplets on the NDIS navigates the scheme, finds the right support and keeps her family at the centre of it all.
Nat didn't plan to become an NDIS expert. She didn't plan for a lot of things.
When her triplet boys arrived at 26 weeks, she and her husband spent eight months in the NICU, navigating a healthcare system they'd never needed to understand before. Brand new parents, mid-COVID, with three tiny babies and no roadmap. Then came the NDIS. Then came four different diagnoses, therapies, specialists, support workers, plan reviews and the slow, hard work of building a life that works for their family, on their terms.
Now, with triplets who've just turned five and a two-year-old rounding out their "busy, loud, love-filled" family of six, Nat speaks about all of it. The system, the setbacks and the small wins, with the kind of calm clarity that only comes from having lived through it.
We sat down with her for an honest conversation about what the NDIS really looks like from the inside, what it takes to find providers you can actually trust and what she hopes her kids will remember about this season of their lives.
What people don't see
Despite her triplets being identical, the boys are so different. They all have their own strengths, personalities and ways of seeing the world. We asked Nat what people get wrong about her day-to-day life;
“You are SO organised.” I mean, not by nature. I have four different junk drawers and two ‘I don’t know where this lives’ piles. But when it comes to the kids? I do not have a choice.
By 6am, medications have been administered, visual schedules are in place, food is prepared to each child's specific needs and behaviour management is already in motion.
By the time school drop-off is done, she's often been up for hours. From there, it's work, phone calls, appointments and back into the afternoon routine as soon as she gets home.
"It's a long day," she says. "But it's all we have known."
The part nobody warns you about
When her boys were first accepted into the NDIS, she went in thinking clear needs would speak for themselves. They didn't.
"No one warned me how much you'd have to advocate. How hard you'd have to push. Or how vulnerable you must be, having to describe your own child's most challenging days to strangers."
The emotional toll of that, the repetition, the proving, the feeling of not being believed, is something she now speaks about openly. Not to discourage other families, but to prepare them.
She also found out six months after the fact that she didn't have to personally pay for disability-related equipment like oxygen tubes and feeding supplies. Nobody had told her.
"The NDIS is its own language, no one hands you a dictionary,” Nat says.
When providers let you down
Not every experience has been positive. When the family was living regionally, access to quality support was a genuine struggle. Staff without adequate training and providers unfamiliar with epilepsy or her children's specific medical needs.
"For a family like ours, that level of mismatch isn't just frustrating. It's genuinely unsafe."
The situation reached a point where the family made the decision to leave their home, their community and their jobs, to move back to the city simply to access better care.
That experience changed how Nat approaches finding providers now. She asks directly about costs up front. She seeks out practitioners who are neuroaffirming. She relies primarily on recommendations from other allied health professionals, people who've worked alongside potential providers and can speak to how they actually show up. She's learned to question invoices when things don’t look right and to have uncomfortable conversations, because she's seen what happens when you don't.
She speaks about the importance of finding the right fit, not keeping people on your team just because it might hurt their feelings to let them go.
What a great provider actually looks like
When Nat talks about the providers who have made a real difference, the shift in her voice is immediate.
"The biggest difference is when they truly see your child as a whole person, not just a diagnosis or a label. It stops feeling like a service and starts feeling more like an extension of your family."
The best providers she's worked with remember the small details, favourite colours, favourite characters and build those into their sessions. They adapt, they collaborate and they work with Nat, not around her.
Finding your footing
Nat credits a pivotal moment in her journey to an experienced early childhood partner who took the time to explain the system in plain language and to remind her that she knew her children better than any professional in the room.
"I stopped being a passive spectator in NDIS meetings. I started trusting what I was seeing every day and asking more questions. That's when I felt more in control. Not because I understood the whole system, but because I understood my kids. That mattered more."
What they will remember
We asked Nat, if her boys could look back on this time one day, what does she hope they see?
She didn't hesitate. She hopes they remember the zoo trips and movie nights alongside the waiting rooms and hospital visits. New Hot Wheels cars and small treats to make hard days lighter. Their nana's house, Lola’s fried rice, their granddad's tickles, their Dad reading them books and their Mum’s big kisses.
"I hope they remember that they were always allowed to be themselves - loud, silly, joyful. That we celebrated them. That we laughed with them, cheered them on and made space for exactly who they are. That they were never something to fix. Just something to love."
What she wished had existed from day one
We asked Nat what she wished had been available when she first received the boys' plans. What resource, what support, what person?
She didn't describe a website or a brochure.
"I wished I had someone I could actually talk to. Someone who could explain things clearly, in plain language. Someone like your Guru team. I wish I'd had that five years ago."
That kind of guidance, accessible, human and free from the pressure of a planning meeting, is exactly what families on the NDIS deserve from the start.
Unstoppable You.
Nat's story isn't one of a family that had it easy. It's one of a family that kept going. Through the NICU, through a system nobody explained, through providers who let them down, through packing up their lives and starting over in a different city. She didn't stop. She advocated, adapted and figured it out, often without the support she should have had from the beginning.
That's what Unstoppable You is about. Not the absence of hard things, but the refusal to be held back by them. The belief that every family deserves the right people around them to make momentum possible.
Provider Choice exists to be that for families navigating the NDIS. Our plan management team are NDIS experts you can actually talk to, people who explain your plan in plain language, help you prepare for reviews, catch overcharging before it costs you and make sure you're getting everything your family is entitled to. One-on-one, no jargon, no pressure.
If you're ready to stop navigating things alone, get in touch with us at planmanagement@providerchoice.com.au or call 1300 776 246.
