Midwife shortage leaves me shocked

WHAT KATI DID NEXT:

WELL I can categorically state that I have given birth.

Last Friday, in the living room of my very own home — thank goodness for laminate — in the very early hours of the morning, a little 7lb 1oz baby boy arrived.

He is, as you would expect me to say, absolutely beautiful and both myself, although no-one’s really bothered about me and rightly so, and my little one are absolutely fine and dandy.

At about 11pm I rang the midwives at the hospital wanting to get a message to the community midwife, as I had planned a homebirth, that I thought things were imminent.

She breathed a huge sigh of relief and said “thank goodness it’s a homebirth as the maternity unit is shut.”

Yes, the hospital was shut, closed, kapput. There was not enough staff on apparently, too few midwives available to the unit so they had had to shut their doors about four hours earlier.

This would have meant that if I had wanted a hospital birth or if there had been any complications at all at home, then I wouldn’t have been able to go to the hospital that is two minutes away, when all the lights are on green, I would have had to travel to the nearest hospital after that which would have been 25 minutes away, when all the lights are on green.

This could have literally meant life or death to either or both my newborn or me.

Speaking to my community midwife, who I have to say was absolutely wonderful, when she arrived half an hour after my phone call, she told me of all the baby units that were being forced to close in the Greater Manchester area.

She told me of the staff shortages and the restrictions that midwives were working under, she told me of the lack of pay increases and she told me that most, if not all, midwives are working for the love of it and for very little else.

All this was between painful contractions, but still I was shocked by the lack of resources for women giving birth.

So is it not time this “new, more effective” Government stepped up to the mark with:

1) More midwives.

2) Pay them more.

3) Support them in the flexibility they need, to do the amazing job they do.