Reflections of Midwife Part Nine

Now 2010 and the project had finished, but I needed to stay in England for another six months, so I applied for a job on Community at City Hospital, believing it would be temporary…. Again how wrong could I be? I was there for a further ten years.

One thing life has taught me is that nothing is predictable and your life really does take many twists and turns, and most of them you don’t see coming. I really enjoyed caring for women again and of course working with amazing midwives and midwifery support workers ….. it was great to be working with midwives who really wanted to make a difference and who put their heart and soul into their practice

City covers the poorest and most socially deprived areas of Birmingham and they say if you can work there you can work anywhere  and I do believe that to be true.

It is emotionally draining witnessing and supporting women who have such tough lives  ..but it’s also truly inspiring too and their strength of character is something to behold ….Their generosity of wanting to “feed you” and their appreciation for your support is truly humbling.I used to love sitting around a table with groups of women from around the world just simply discussing life …. It’s what I love to do.

As Community Midwives at City we also covered the Serenity Birth Centre (the best ever Birth Centre ) the Halcyon Birth Centre, home births, clinics and on calls  

It was the busiest place I have ever worked at and the workload was totally overwhelming at times …… but our teams were tight knit and we managed …although sometimes we had no idea how we did  But we all had a great sense of humour and laughter got us through many a tough time.

We also had a truly amazing woman at our helm in Eva. Eva was a senior midwife who was like a “mother” to us all  …..a very strict mother at times  but she cared. She cared about others and she cared about midwives too and it was a sad day when she retired.

After applying for 9 positions whilst at City (including a Bereavement Midwife post and a Teaching post) and not being successful  I realised it was time to move on.

My time here was over.