Holding sacred space in labour and birth

Abstract

This chapter is the offspring of two midwives from different ends of the earth, Céline from French-speaking Canada and Carolyn from Australia. Although Céline’s mother tongue is French she also speaks and writes well in English while Carolyn’s first language is English with only snippets of the French language. Before the actual writing began, we met weekly for several months using Skype. Our conversations ranged from the practical matters of co-writing, through various philosophical ideas, our research interests and conundrums to spirituality related topics. We shared stories about our experiences in midwifery practice. We used our stories, as midwives always do, to illustrate points in our discussion. The goal of these meetings was to learn from each other and come to a shared understanding of terms and definitions. The results of those discussions are to be found in the table of definitions (see Table 7.1); our individual voices are named in the text. While much of the content is referenced, some of the information and understandings we share in this chapter come from our vast experience in one-to-one midwifery care and reflect our learning from the women and families we were privileged to midwife and the academic work we have done in this area. The stories in this chapter come from our practice. Names of women, their locations and some elements of the stories have been changed to maintain confidentiality and anonymity for the women and their families.