Читать книгу The Midwife’s Here!: The Enchanting True Story of One of Britain’s Longest Serving Midwives - Linda Fairley - Страница 8

To this day, the story of Geraldine Drew and the birth of her triplets remains one of my all-time favourites. It encapsulates the role of a midwife as a professional assistant and confidante, whose ultimate aim is to help women deliver babies safely into the world, whatever the circumstances.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a midwife as ‘a nurse (typically a woman) who is trained to assist women in childbirth’. Over the decades, I have learned that there are many, many different ways a midwife can assist a woman in childbirth and, believe you me, plenty of them are not listed in midwifery textbooks!

When I started my nursing training in 1966 at the Manchester Royal Infirmary (MRI) I had no idea what I was letting myself in for, or even that I would become a midwife. I have since delivered more than 2,200 babies and I still tingle with excitement at every birth. Just feeling the warmth of a newborn’s head in your hands, that new life, there’s honestly nothing like it.

In 2010 I celebrated forty years as a qualified midwife, becoming Britain’s longest-serving midwife at the same hospital. Today, I marvel at how much, yet also how very little, has altered over the years. I’ve witnessed countless changes in the NHS and in midwifery practices, from the demise of the old Nightingale wards to incredible breakthroughs in pregnancy drugs and IVF. I’ve seen fashions for routine enemas, bottle-feeding and home births come and go, and I’ve watched the reluctant shuffle of dads into antenatal classes and delivery suites turn into a stampede.

There have been nine changes of government during my career, so I’m told, but I have never let politics get in the way of delivering babies. I have been very happy sailing along in the great old liner that is the NHS, quietly navigating sea changes in bureaucracy, funding, practices and guidelines. I’ve never aspired to rise up the ranks and become a manager. Delivering babies and striving to make every pregnant woman feel like the most important pregnant woman in the world is what I do best.

Last year I had the honour of being my daughter’s midwife during her pregnancy, and I am now a very proud grandmother. Baby Joel was born prematurely in July 2011 as I was working on this book and also mourning the death of my third husband, Peter.

So much has happened over the years that I could not fit my memoirs into one volume, and this book concentrates on the early years of my career in the late Sixties and early Seventies. That means the story of Joel’s nerve-racking birth, along with so many others, will have to wait.

As you read this first instalment, I will keep laughing and crying, remembering and writing.