What do you think midwives do?

[pinkneed]

Follow on from a thread earlier about nurses.

I feel like it's such a misunderstood profession. All the time people are shocked when I tell them what my days consist of.

I often get called a nurse too, by patients, staff in other departments and the public.

I've loved every single midwife I've had in my 3 pregnancies and births 🥰

Can I ask a possibly daft question?

How do patients or colleagues address you? I've never called our 'midwife!' at any stage before

They use our name! Or if they don't know that it's "excuse me!!"

I am half way through my training and feeling a little overwhelmed with the responsibilities I’ll hold when I qualify. This thread has given me the reminder why I want to do this x

Don't forget specialist midwives such as

Fetal care midwives (working with women with increased risks of anomalies or those who have abnormalities found on scans).

Bereavement midwives supporting women who loose a baby.

Midwives who provide extra care to young mothers.

Safeguarding midwives who work with domestic abuse victims or families where they baby may be at risk

I'm very fortunate that in my community role I largely have very good continuity. However, staffing just doesn't facilitate it for everyone all the time. Sometimes it's down to little things like people rejecting the appointment I offer so I need to offer them another one, which is with a different midwife. It's really hard hearing us get slated so often. We try so so hard to provide good care, it's all we want to do. We aren't given enough time and more work is piled on every single week. We hate the tickbox feel of it too, I promise. We are trying.

Thank you. I didn't know much about the midwife role until reading this. I only know what they did for me and they were all amazing. A trainee midwife saved me from a downward spiral after traumatic birth and taught me to breastfeed and I never got to thank her.

Thank you! It is indeed longer than I would have imagined.

I had the most amazing midwife with my second. DS was prem and had to be transferred to a different hospital. They didn’t know if he would survive and if he did they thought he had a severe condition. My midwife sat with me all day after he was transferred. We chatted about loads of different things and she really took my mind off everything. She also came to see me when DS (who survived and is a healthy boy) came back to the hospital a few weeks later. I’ve never forgotten what she did for me

This thread makes me very grateful that I had my baby overseas! I was able to choose a midwife I saw eye to eye with, and she then did all ante/ post natal care as well as being there at the birth. She lived quite near me, so appointments were almost always at my home, over a cup of tea. Can't imagine seeing someone different every time, or not getting to choose who attends the birth.
I think she said she had a case load of about 50 women a year, so to hear that 100 is not uncommon here goes some way to explain the difference...

This is really eye opening, I just looked up the average midwife salary and it is really shocking considering the wide-ranging expertise needed for this role.

I’m a student midwife and today I had a woman come to her antenatal appointment after she’d found out one of her twins had died in utero.

This afternoon we had a woman who’d had a high risk of Edwards syndrome and she was torn about what to do.

being a midwife isn’t just about cuddling babies

Too much! But with both my children, the most recent being born last year, I only ever saw the gliding swans and never the furious paddling going on under the surface! Very grateful for the wonderful care I received and everyone midwife I met was an absolute angel apart from one.