Creating Sanctuary - Barry & Cardiff, South Wales

Catrin - The Birth Partner Project  


Quotes from the responses to the questions that I gave to the volunteers featured in Creating Sanctuary.

1. “I have been volunteering as a birth partner for women who would otherwise give birth alone. These women have mostly been asylum seekers and victims of human trafficking.”

“I have given emotional and physical support and comfort to women during labour, helped them make informed decisions and nurtured them when they have felt vulnerable and frightened.”

2. “Meeting ‘A’ for the first time was a huge turning point for me, a timid, scared young woman with a bulging belly, little English and without a friend in the world, she arrived in Cardiff heavily pregnant and on meeting, it was clear she had experienced the most awful things in her life.”

3. “I can, for a short time try to substitute the family of that woman, I can giggle with her like her sister, share the movements of her baby like her mother, stroke her skin and mop her brow like a partner and by fulfilling her basic needs of compassion, connection and love I get all that straight back.”

4. “The Birth Partner Project cannot sustain itself on no money, the website costs money, marketing costs money, volunteers can’t be expected to pay to park at the hospital themselves to support women, volunteers need feeding on 12 hour shifts, training, recruiting and supporting volunteers will all cost money and as a new charity we have none.”

5. “I have held a teenage girl while she cried for her mother who she will probably never see again and heard women speak in hushed tones of their past that they struggle to share even with women who suffered the same. These people are just people, alone in a new place, they are professionals, students, mothers, daughters, sons, fathers.”

6. “…it reminds everyone that our needs in pregnancy and birth are the same, regardless of our age, language, ethnicity or citizenship status. We all need support, dignity and love. We need to feel safe, valued and we need to be treated like a human being.”

7. “I would like to think that I have been able to improve the birth experience and early days of parenting for the women I have supported, I think my impact on just one life is such an honour and I feel my life is given purpose through being able to serve others.”