Hello!
I’ve just come across this thread and thought I’d write a little comment. I’m a newly qualified midwife (just under a year qualified now).
Gosh, I fully empathise that it’s a huge decision. My first thought is that it sounds like you’ve been considering this for a while, and despite all the negative things you hear, there’s still a nagging voice deep down telling you to go for it. I say, listen to that little voice - even if it’s a ‘give it a go and if it doesn’t work out, you know in your heart you tried it’.
I’ll give you my pennies worth of experience though, and hope that it helps affirm your decision somewhat.
I didn’t find the training all that gruelling, in fact I found the 3 years mostly so exciting and full of highs - I distinctly remember being a first year on my first day and couldn’t believe I was being taught by real life midwives! The joy of gaining new skills, driving home from a shift feeling like you were helpful, passing an assignment, moving up the years and getting closer to graduation - it was all so exciting.
I should say though that I was 20 when I began my training, had no babies of my own and was in a fortunate financial position - all things I know that relieved a lot of the pressure that lots of the other girls in my cohort struggled with (but all got through and are all working as midwives now!).
Life as a qualified midwife so far has been much more smooth sailing than I was told to anticipate, although that’s not to say I’ve not had my fair share of rubbishy shifts. I’ve been based on delivery suite since I qualified. The rubbishy shifts for me are generally the shifts where you are given woman after woman to care for, without really feeling like you’re truly be able to care for them in the way you’d imagined you would when you decided you wanted to be a midwife. You have so much paperwork and tick-boxing to do, and so much pressure from the shift coordinators to get it all done quickly so that you can take the next woman, that you feel sometimes as though you’re just a cog in a very-almost-broken machine. It’s after those kind of crazy-busy shifts that I spend all night feeling guilty for not having the time to be truly ‘with woman’, worrying that I’ve missed something/rushed something and made a mistake/forgotten a vital piece of information to handover etc etc.
But...perhaps most importantly for you to know, is that I always come back for the next shift. Why? Because my goodness the good days are worth it. When you spend an entire 12 hour shift in a room with one labouring woman, building the most special trusting relationship, sometimes chatting like old friends, helping her to believe in herself and her ability to birth her baby (via whatever mode that may be), and then helping her bring her baby into the world in the silence of the night while the rest of the world sleeps, and having that little goodbye cuddle before your shift ends - it’s such a flipping privilege. The labour care and births for me are my favourite bit about the whole job, and I still keep count.
What I also love about working on the delivery suite is the team effort - working with some incredibly talented frontline doctors and sharing midnight snacks to keep each other going! There have been a couple of memorable shifts where I’ve done a little skip down the corridor with the biggest smile on my face, all because I truly love my job and the wonderful people in it, and I feel so, so lucky to call myself a midwife. One of those shifts was Christmas Day, delivering the Christmas babies into the word.
Yes, the NHS is tough, yes, there are incredible pressures, yes, you cry from the exhausation of it all, but my goodness, what we see, and what we do day in, day out, is truly special. Go for it girl! Hope to see you in your blues one day💙
My first year qualified has
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