letseat. I'm a midwife. I find itvery stressful. Lots of paperwork, overworked, pressure, finger pointing, investigations, etc, not enough time to do stuff well and the threat of disciplinary if you don't do stuff well.
I think I'd quite like to be a teacher but 95% of teachers seem to hate their job. But then I'd say a similar amount of midwives want to leave.
With midwifery you will have to work shifts, you may well get weeks and weeks of nights or weekends in a row. You get no say over your shifts. Xmas day, easter, bank holidays, etc. You often get no say in when you can take annual leave. If you want a specific week off you have to hope you get it or beg someone TO swap their annual leave. You may well work in a unit which frequently over allocates shifts to you, so you get 60plus hours worth of shifts a week even though your contract says 30.
gracerose. Entry requirements at my local uni are maths, english and a science gcse. Then either 2 As and a B at a level or an equivalent access course. In practice not many people get in via access. Over 1000 people apply for 80 places so they take their pick. Remember you need to pay 9k a year tuition fees now. You won't get child tax credits because even though you do 40 hours a week training it's not counted as you being employed so I got no help towards childcare costs. Unless that's changed since I trained but doubt it. It's a hard course.
I wouldn't encourage my dds into doing it. Maybe get a job as a hcsw in the mat wing and see what you think?