1701: The Doula part 1

Speaker: All right, before we get started, I want to warn you that this story contains graphic descriptions of pregnancy loss, sexual violence, and emotional abuse. I'm in her home and observing her contractions. Her contractions were very inconsistent. I was timing her contractions and the length of the contraction was almost exactly the same length every time. Sienna Hayes is a doula out of London, Ontario, Canada, and she's helping her client, Caitlin Braun, breathe through her contractions. One would be seven minutes apart, and the next one would be three minutes apart, and then the next one would be ten minutes apart. There we go. The wave down. Good job. Caitlin says that she is 41 weeks pregnant, but for some reason, she did not want to go to the hospital. Good job. Sienna the doula managed to convince her to go. She wouldn't get out of the car and then I kept saying to her stuff like I'm not delivering your baby on the grass outside the hospital. I'm not delivering your baby on the sidewalk outside the hospital. You know, like, like, I kept saying stuff like that to her and it took her an hour to get from the car inside the hospital. It was a two minute walk. What was her reasoning for not going into the hospital? So she didn't want to go to the Brantford Hospital because the assault that resulted in this pregnancy happened outside the emergency doors at Brantford Hospital. That's what she told me. That she got sexually assaulted outside of the hospital? That's what she told me. So that's why she didn't want to go to the Brantford Hospital. Sienna, you know the doula, didn't quite know what to do. I mean, her job is to be kind and understanding, but she was frustrated. She understood that her client, Caitlin, suffered trauma at the hospital, but they were so close. If only she could take a couple steps in, she could get the care that she needs. So Sienna came up with another idea. Why don't we just drive to a nearby hospital in Cambridge? When we got to Cambridge hospital on the Saturday night, She played up the trauma card, right? She really played up that she, she was really, really afraid of going to the hospital. She was really afraid of getting any kind of vaginal exam. She was really afraid of people touching her when she didn't want to be touched. At one point when we were still trying to make our way inside the hospital, I was saying to her like, these are nurses, like they're going to care for you, they're not going to hurt you, I'm going to be there to advocate for you as well, saying like reassuring stuff like that. And then she told me that it was a nurse who had sexually assaulted her outside the emergency doors at Brantford Hospital. You know, you finally convince her to go. Inside the hospital and we finally get inside the hospital. Uh, we go into triage. So it's OB triage. So at this point I'm thinking, okay, labor has stalled. She hasn't had a contraction for an hour and a half or something. And then they have shift change and a new nurse comes in and tries to find her fetal heart rate again. And she's like the, the, like the tracking looked fine. I just want to see for myself as she couldn't find a fetal heart rate. Now. That's also not completely out of the ordinary, especially for somebody who's overweight. It can be hard for those monitors to catch a fetal heart rate. So I, so the nurse is looking for the heart rate and I'm reassuring her that like this is okay. It doesn't mean your baby's in any kind of distress. Like sometimes these monitors just don't work very well. And then so the OB leaves and then we kind of were just waiting for a while that OB had to go into an emergency C section. So that takes about an hour. So at one point, Caitlin says to me, if they're not here by 830, I'm leaving. And I looked at her, I looked at the time and it was 824. And I looked at her and I said, nine o'clock and she was 845. That's a compromise. I said, no, the compromise is nine o'clock. I don't want you to leave. So the compromise is nine o'clock. She goes, okay, fine. And I said, okay, well, if you are planning on leaving, you should tell the nurse. She wouldn't call the nurse. So I had to call the nurse. And then so the nurse comes in and says, you know, like, what's going on? And Caitlin says, well, I just, I'm really anxious, so I want to go home. And the nurse is like, well, if you're anxious, you should stay and find out what's happening. Yeah. And she says, especially Caitlin claimed that her water broke on the way to the hospital. So the nurse said, you know, especially if you think your water broke, you really need to stay and get checked. And Caitlin said. Well, I don't think it actually broke. I think I was just feeling a weird pressure. And so that's why I thought it was my water breaking. No one in the history of waters breaking has described it as a weird pressure. So that's not. I've witnessed it. It was, uh, quite dramatic. Yeah. Um, that's not how you would describe your water breaking, so that was kind of a weird red flag near the end there. Uh, but the nurse was like, okay, well, we're still going to want to check you to make sure that it didn't break. Basically, the nurse convinces her to stay. The OB comes back in with the bedside ultrasound machine and a student and the nurse. As the OB is, like, leaning the bed back to get a better, like, access to her belly, Kaitlyn says that she's nervous. And I kind of thought, I was like, that's, this is such a weird thing to be nervous about. Like, it's a, it's an ultrasound. It's not invasive. Like, it's, you're gonna see your baby. Like, it's, normally people are pretty chill about that, right? So, the OB starts doing the ultrasound. And I look at the, the screen, and there's no baby there. Yeah, that's right. There's no baby. It's not a stillbirth. Her womb was completely empty. Because Caitlin Braun was never pregnant to begin with. Yeah, she faked the entire thing. But the question is, why? And the doula, Sienna Hayes, wasn't Kaitlyn Braun's only mark. There are reports of 50 to 60 doulas targeted. I'm Javier Leyva and this is Pretend. Stories about real people pretending to be someone else. We were at the hospital and They did a bedside ultrasound in front of me. I saw that there was no baby. The OB told her there was no pregnancy and told her that all there was in her uterus was an IUD. So that's how I found out that it was a lie. Oh my God. And there's no, there's no like looking for the baby at that point. Like the baby is there. It's, it's obvious. It's, you know, but there was no baby. And so the obese stops the ultrasound. And I was like really confused at this point because I was like, you didn't, why are you stopping? You didn't find the baby yet. Like what's going on here? So I'm just kind of sitting there like watching things unfold and the obese sits down on the bed next to her and says, Caitlin, I'm so sorry, but there is no pregnancy. And she says, the imaging that you got done in Hamilton three weeks ago. also shows no pregnancy. She says the only thing in your uterus is an IUD. So the OB offered to have psychiatry or social work come to talk to her and she declined. I was like taken aback that she would say no to that because obviously something's going on here. Like wouldn't you want to talk to somebody? What was going on? Through your mind at this point. So at this point, I didn't know what I was dealing with. I didn't know if she was completely lying and fabricated everything, or if this was like a, they call it like a hysterical pregnancy, um, where you believe so strongly that you are pregnant that your body starts to reflect that you can even start lactating. If you believe strongly enough that you are pregnant. And so I was like, I don't know if maybe she believed that she was pregnant and so that's why all of this happened at this point. I was like, okay, I have a decision to make. I can either potentially show a lot of compassion to somebody who really doesn't deserve it or. I could be a huge jerk to somebody who is going through a real medical event and feels as though they just lost a baby. And so I decided to make the decision that I could live with, and I decided to show compassion to somebody who possibly didn't deserve it. I took her home. It was a very quiet car ride home. The only thing she said to me was, I'm so confused. Now is probably just as good a time as ever to define the role of a doula. A doula is different than a midwife. A midwife is like a nurse. They're trained medical professionals who can assist with prenatal care, birth, and even in the postpartum period. Doulas, however, don't deliver babies and they don't give out medical advice. does your medical care or your nurse or your doctor does your medical care. I'm there for your comfort and kind of emotional support. If you say that you don't want something and, and your nurse is being really pushy, I can be the one who says, no, she said no to that. And I'm going to be there to help you cope with the significant change that becoming a parent is. Sienna Hayes sometimes works with a doula agency, but occasionally she'll see clients on the side. So I had set up an Instagram account. I had maybe made like half a dozen posts and I got a message from this woman asking if I provided, I'm in London, Ontario, and she asked if I provided support outside of London. That was her first encounter with Caitlin Braun. She told me she was in Brantford, which is about an hour's drive away from London. And I asked her, you know, kind of when's your due date? How far along are you kind of thing? This was on a Saturday and she said that she was due on the Monday. We do get people who are looking like around like the 37 week mark. 37 weeks is considered full term. But two days before your due date is pretty last minute. Like we don't see that a whole lot. She had told me that she had had a sort of run ins. with doulas in her area. She told me that there was one doula who was in her words, shit talking her to all the other doulas. So she had had a bad experience with this one person who had then like spread rumors about her. And so that's why she was looking so last minute and outside of her area. She also told me that she didn't find out she was pregnant until very late in her pregnancy. So she kind of explained it away. And so that's why I didn't really think too hard about it. So she signed my contract that night. She filled out my intake form. She told me that she was, that this pregnancy was the result of sexual assault. And that was one of the reasons that she didn't find out until really late, because she wasn't sexually active. So she didn't think of that as a possibility. She told me that she has PCOS. polycystic ovarian syndrome. It is very hard to get pregnant and you often miss periods, so like it wouldn't, like missing your period wouldn't be a red flag, but she told me that she was on a medication for PCOS that balanced all of her hormones. and caused pregnancy tests to give a false negative. That's not a thing, but I didn't know that at the time. I had offered to do this for free for her because she was, I just felt so bad for her. She told me that she was a victim of sexual assault, that she had nobody in her life who would support her. She told me that her mom didn't believe that she was assaulted. Um, and so her mom wasn't supportive. I just felt so bad for her. Like, she just really seemed like she was completely alone in the world. I mean, why would you not believe her? You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. Like, who makes that up? So she called me on the Monday to, to come to her. She told me that she was in labor. So she called me to come to her house. On the way to her house, I feel like the universe was trying to give me signs because I passed a car that on fire on the side of the road. And then I also drove through a freak rainstorm. It was like, I couldn't see 10 feet in front of my car. People were pulling over and I just like kept going. I got to her house. And like, it was, it was a normal first meeting, like she just said, Hi, how are you? I'm Caitlin. Uh, I introduced myself, come on in. We went straight to her bedroom, which is kind of where she was most comfortable. There was not very much. Like the sofa in her living room was kind of full of stuff. So there wasn't really anywhere to sit other than in her bedroom. Yeah. And she started having contractions. I started timing them and she was like moving around during her contraction in a very Natural way. It was very believable. I asked Sienna to describe her house. Were there any baby things laying around? Normally, if you're expecting a baby, you have a crib set up, boxes of diapers everywhere, clothes, a changing table, you know, that kind of stuff. So, there were, like, baby items around. There was, like, a sleeper. There was a car seat. She had diapers. She had breast pads. She had clothes. Um, and like baby washcloths and stuff like that. She told me that she was low income. So, this, it really didn't seem odd to me that there wasn't a nursery because she lived at home with her mom. She couldn't move. It's easy for us listening to this now to realize that there's a lot about this that doesn't quite make sense. But remember, Sienna really believes Kaitlin is pregnant. In this line of work, we are, like, our whole thing is that we believe you and we trust you. Any red flags that I had were kind of washed away when I met her mom. Here's what I don't understand. Sienna met Caitlin's mom. And after talking to several people, I actually believe that Sienna actually met Caitlin's mom. If this really was Caitlin's mom, was she in on it too? Obviously, she knows that her daughter isn't pregnant. Or maybe she does think she was pregnant. I don't know. Her mom was around and she would come in and talk to us when she got home from work. Any red flags that I had were kind of washed away when I met her mom because her mom didn't seem like she was, I don't know how to describe it. Like she just, like, it seemed Normal to her. Like it didn't seem out of the ordinary to her. Was the mom in on this? I I'm clear. I don't know. Now the question on everyone's mind is if Caitlin was 38 weeks pregnant, wouldn't she be showing people carry differently in their pregnancies? And she was overweight. So it was hard to tell that she was, whether she was pregnant or not. Honestly, like I look back at the pictures and I'm like, no, she does actually look pregnant for real. She's like having contractions and they're very believable. Like I even took a voice note and sent it to another doula. That's what a contraction sounds like. Whenever Sienna would start raising questions or feeling doubtful, Caitlin had an explanation. Her sister was going to be getting married that Friday and she had a dress for the baby to wear to the wedding. Yeah. So like all of the red flags that I had were explained. Right. And who does it going back? Like, nobody does it. So that you have, and you're, and that's what I kept telling myself. Yeah. And you're in a very trusting, uh, business where you're very empathetic and nurturing. And so you're not like, I'm a very skeptical person because I talk to con artists all the time and they're like, but you're, you're a doula. You're, you're supposed to be empathetic and passionate, you know? Like, yeah. So like, that's, that's our whole. Thing is that we, like, you tell me something, I'm going to believe you. You tell me that you were assaulted. I'm going to believe you and, and act accordingly. You tell me that your contractions are unbearable. I'm going to believe you. She was so manipulative that it is hard for me even now to just believe someone. And again, in this line of work, we are like, our whole thing is that we believe you and we trust you. And here's the crazy part. Caitlin Braun. Didn't just fake her pregnancy with Sienna. She reportedly pulled these elaborate pregnancy scams with almost 60 other doulas in and around Ontario. I think it was October. There was a post on a doula Facebook group. Uh, somebody had said that this person had hired them for a stillbirth in Guelph. They were at an Airbnb and they were 37 weeks pregnant and things were just not quite lining up. Can I get some insight on this or whatever? So my mentor saw that and she was like, red flag immediately. So she messages this person and says, is the client's name, name, Caitlin Braun, and she said, yes. And my mentor says, okay, you need to talk to Shauna. So I talked to this doula and I said, listen, I'm pretty sure she's not pregnant. Cause when I saw her, she had an IUD, but I, I truthfully can't guarantee that she's not pregnant at all, but I can guarantee you that she is not 37 weeks pregnant. That's impossible. Katelyn has sent this doula 700 and so the doula returned that 700 and said I'm cutting off support and Katelyn responded with something to the effect of like well just because other doulas don't believe me I'm not worthy of support and the doula was just like I'm not I'm not getting into that like we're done here and there was another post in a doula group saying if you get contacted by somebody by the name of Katelyn Braun do not support her she's not pregnant So she makes a group chat within an hour. I think we had 12 people in that group chat and then they just kept coming like constant stream of new victims and then it would be like a couple days would go by and we would find a new victim and a couple days would go by and we find a new victim. It is very strange and there's not an obvious motive here like what was she yeah, was she trying to rip you guys off or like get, you know, like she did pay some, some of the jewelers she paid. Really? Some of the doulas, she agreed to pay and didn't. Some of the doulas, like myself, agreed to work for free. When you look at the timeline of who she victimized and when, there's almost no gap in between victims. So, she just constantly. Wanted somebody it's almost like a, a narcissistic thing where they just, she just needed somebody to be telling her that she was good and telling her that she was doing a good job and telling her that she was safe and, and being cared for it. You know, like, I honestly don't really know what the motive was. There could very well have been a sexual component to it. Some on Reddit say that Caitlin Braun has a birthing fetish. Others claim that she is seeking attention, almost similar to Munchausen syndrome. There was one victim that I got in contact with who was in the States and she was right before me, like the week before I was there, she was supporting Caitlin. And at one point Caitlin. video called her and like propped the phone up on her dresser or something and then sat down on her bed and, and like made to give herself a cervix check, which you can check your own cervix, but like, if you're not pregnant, that's why would you do that? Other than to just like voyeurism or something, right? So the doula kind of just like covered the screen and she was like, Oh, I'm just going to give you some privacy. And Caitlin said something to the effect of like, Oh, is my body shameful to you or something along those lines. So like really trying to manipulate this doula into watching her give herself a cervix check. And some of the other doulas like she had gotten completely nude and gotten into the bath and then, uh, pretended to be like really faint and need help getting out of the bath with almost everyone who was with her in person. gave her a massage while she was naked. So it, it very much seems like there was some sort of sexual component to it. There were people who supported her remotely, who like, like the story is insane enough that I don't even know that I know the whole story at this point. You know, it was really, really, Just so bizarre. And so it's like the word that I keep coming back to is like it was a mind fuck. Sorry for swearing, but like, no, it was just like it completely messed with my mind and I, I still can't even really make sense of it. Since Caitlin Braun was exposed, many doulas have come forward. This is my experience with this whole doula scam thing that you may have heard of. It's been crazy, uh, finding out how many other people, not just doulas, that she has. affected and traumatized. I am certainly one of the people that she has traumatized. I'm still very angry. I'm still very hurt and upset. I still feel very violated. I'm angry at her for the trauma that she has caused so many individuals. Next time on Pretend, I'm talking with another doula who had a completely different experience with Caitlin Braun. If you want to listen to Part 2, click here. It will be out on Patreon and Pretend Plus on Apple Podcasts as soon as it's ready. Of course, you could always listen to the show ad free on both platforms and get early and bonus content. So I would love it if you could support the show. It's kind of like buying me a cup of coffee to keep this thing running. That's it for this week. This episode was written by me, Javier Leyva. It was also produced by Jamila Huxable and edited by the talented Poonath Shenoy with the podcast pundits.