Volunteering as a Maternity Mate

Last October I began a Maternity Mate training with Sister Circle in Tower Hamlets, East London. Sister Circle is a brilliant charity that supports women in challenging circumstances to empower themselves and lead healthy lives through service provision, advocacy and peer support. Their Maternity Mate programme provides one-to-one pregnancy, birth and postnatal support. Local female volunteers (like me) are trained to provide vital practical and emotional support.

I embraced the role wholeheartedly and it was an honour to accompany my awesome mum through her third and fourth trimester. I learned so much from the trainers and my fellow volunteers but the most indelible teachings came from the mum I was matched with. The whole experience brought me a little closer to a childhood dream of becoming a midwife and stoked my desire to work with parents & babies as the craniosacral therapist that I am.

The course was powerful - well informed, eye opening, and thought provoking. It covered an array of important subjects:

~ why we want to work with mums

~ mentors in our lives

~ the friendship, befriending, mentoring continuum

~ social exclusion

~ working in a trauma informed way

~ antenatal care

~ preparing for birth

~ principles of basic advocacy

~ active listening skills

~ birth and postnatal support

~ infant feeding

~ maternal mental health

The remarkable women that Sister Circle supports find themselves in difficult circumstances of multiple complexities – no support network, living in poor temporary accommodation, newly arrived in the UK with little English, no knowledge of the maternity and women’s healthcare systems, homeless, having experienced gender violence. “It is hard to comprehend how difficult it is to be unsupported during pregnancy and childbirth. The experience of these months influence and stay with the family for a lifetime. The Maternity Mates project aims to help to make this a positive and life enhancing experience.”