Sarah Treleaven
speaker
56 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Sarah Treleaven’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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A warning. This story contains references to medical emergencies, including baby loss. We also deal with sexual assault, and there is some strong language. Please take care. It's a Friday night in November 2022. Amy Perry is at home, in a town just west of Toronto, Canada. And she's sick.
She was spending most of her time in bed, bored and scrolling on Facebook.
I just love that name, Placenta Squad. Amy, along with most of the Placenta Squad, is a doula.
Doulas work with pregnant people. They're not medical professionals. They assist people through labor and delivery by offering emotional support. The focus is on the woman, not the baby. They will help with massage or position or talk you through the pain or when things start to get too overwhelming. And they're different from midwives. A midwife has medical training.
Often a doula will work alongside midwives or doctors, but unlike someone with medical expertise, they cannot give or prescribe medication.
Doula work can involve helping women through trauma. In fact, many doulas come to this line of work through their own bad experiences, so it's a point of pride that they take on the really hard cases. And that night in November, Amy is scrolling on the Placenta Squad page when she sees a post from her friend and fellow doula, Katie.
Katie is working with a client in crisis, who says her pregnancy is the result of an assault. Here's Katie.
This client's name was Caitlin Braun, and she was 24 years old, and she would now have to birth a stillborn baby. Caitlin found Katie through social media. After sending a message and setting things up, Katie and Caitlin connected on the phone. Caitlin said she lived with her mom, but they didn't have the best relationship. Her life had been hard and full of neglect.
This is November 2022. Remember COVID? Much of our world was online or by phone, and that includes doula work. So when labor started, it was Katie on the phone with Caitlin.
It's at this point that Katie has to go to her day job. So she tags in Amy from the placenta squad, who's sick in bed but able to support Caitlin through what is bound to be an emotional and difficult birth of a stillborn baby.
Caitlin had mentioned to Amy that she was naming her child Eden.
While it might sound like a young woman having to deliver a stillborn baby that was conceived through rape could not possibly get more tragic, the truth of this story is devastating in a completely different way.
I've reported on a lot of heart-wrenching stories. Social workers who exploited vulnerable kids. Ponzi schemers who stole life savings. I've spent the last year and a half immersed in Caitlin's world. And this is one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. A story that has puzzled psychiatrists and legal systems. A story that contorts moral and ethical instincts.
and a perpetrator who takes up the valuable time of a stressed and overloaded medical system. A woman who took so much from people whose job is to give. The people you will hear from never want any of this to happen again. But no one really knows what they would have done differently.
For CBC and the BBC World Service, I'm Sarah Trelevan. And this is The Con, Caitlin's baby. Episode one, The Barking Dog. Hour after hour, Amy helps Caitlin with the early stages of labor. Amy constantly on the phone, encouraging, listening, crying, everything and anything Caitlin needs.
Here is this lonely young woman, traumatized by a sexual assault that led to a pregnancy. A baby that died in utero at around 32 weeks, and she is now birthing her child alone. She tells Amy and Katie that her family has abandoned her, that they blamed her for the rape and didn't support her decision to keep the baby.
In fact, Amy says that Caitlin told her all sorts of intimate things, which isn't unusual for doulas.
Caitlin has been in labor for nearly 40 hours. And Amy was hardly sleeping, hardly eating.
Amy is sick, so she can't meet Caitlin at the hospital. And Amy's friend and doula partner, Katie, is at work.
Finally, after what felt like a lot more work than it should have, Amy convinces Caitlin to call a car.
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