It sounded easy, though I had never made up a bottle or pinned a nappy in my life. From my experience at the MRI, however, I expected that caring for the mothers and newborns would mean a lot more than making tea, mopping brows and rocking babies to sleep. Nevertheless I felt sure it would be much more pleasant dealing with new life than coping with sickness and death.
‘Don’t worry, you won’t be asked to do anything you don’t feel able to do,’ Mrs Ingham said, as if she had just read my mind. ‘I’m sure you’ll prove to be a very useful little helper.’
‘I hope so,’ I said.
‘That’s a good girl,’ Mrs Ingham replied. ‘Let’s get started, shall we?’
She took me to a ward that occupied a corner of the building, and had high windows on three sides. The walls were painted bright white and laser-like sunbeams pierced the air overhead. I blinked and felt a smile twitching at the corners of my lips. There was a lovely smell of warm milk and talcum powder.
Beds lined all three walls, and each bed had a cot standing beside it. I was interested to see the cots were like little cloth hammocks fixed between two metal stands. Some babies were asleep in the cots while others were being fed or changed. At a glance it was impossible to tell which were boys and which were girls, as each baby was dressed in an identical white cotton nightie, fastened with three little bows up the back.
There was so much to take in, I didn’t know what to look at first, or where each of the noises was coming from. Some babies were griping while others squeaked and cried. One or two mums were talking animatedly. Others sat quietly, bottle-feeding their babies, while a few dozed and snored.
Four midwives were on the ward. One was rocking a grizzly baby in her arms as she sat beside a sleeping mother, and another was distributing glass bottles, filled with baby milk and topped with rubber teats, to the end of each bed. A third midwife was patiently demonstrating how to fold a cloth nappy correctly and insert the pins without ‘using baby’s bottom as a pin cushion’, and a fourth was pushing a trolley laden with cot linen and cotton wool.
Each midwife looked calm and approachable. Their skirts were full and long and their substantial aprons were strapped and starched and pinned neatly, though somehow they didn’t look quite as smart as the MRI nurses. Their image appealed to me a great deal. It was hard to put your finger on it, but the midwives looked less starchy and more modern than the nurses at the MRI. Each had a shiny fob watch attached to her breast pocket, which stood proud of the apron and looked for all the world like a well-deserved medal of honour.
Mrs Ingham introduced me to a ward sister called Sister Rose. ‘I’m very pleased to welcome you, Nurse Lawton,’ she said genuinely. ‘Come into my office and I will run through a few basics. We’re extremely glad to have an extra pair of hands on the ward.’
Sister Rose was laid back compared to most of the sisters I had encountered at the MRI. She made the routine on her ward sound very simple. Ladies who had just delivered and had no complications came to this postnatal ward. They would be required to stay in bed for six hours, strictly without exception, to give their uterus the chance to contract and settle after giving birth. It would be my job to take each lady a bedpan if she required one in that time, and to provide her with bottles of milk, terry nappies and pins and cotton wool for her baby.
‘We wake the babies routinely to feed them every four hours,’ Sister Rose explained. ‘Babies must be encouraged to feed even if they don’t appear hungry. A strict routine is important, and no bottles are to be distributed between regular feed times.’
Newborn babies, I learned, were lifted away from the mother immediately after they were born. New mothers only held their baby briefly for the first time after the midwife had weighed and dressed the infant, wiped its face and head if need be and swaddled it snugly. Each baby was then taken away to the nursery and bathed by the midwife before finally being handed to the mother. In those days, the bonding and subsequent breastfeeding benefits of immediate skin-to-skin contact for mother and baby were yet to be discovered.
‘When they are in their cots, we swaddle them and lay the babies to sleep on their tummies,’ Sister Rose explained. ‘This helps them to sleep soundly.’
Later research would recommend laying babies on their backs and not swaddling them too tightly to reduce the risk of overheating and even cot death, but that was many years in the future.
I was also told that the women on this ward were routinely given a drug called Stilboestrol to suppress lactation, as it was nowhere near as fashionable to breastfeed as it is today. Some ladies wished to drink dissolved Epsom salts, believing they helped the body expel fluid which they hoped would further reduce the milk levels in the breasts.
‘In my opinion, this is an old wives’ tale,’ Sister Rose told me, rolling her eyes playfully, ‘but there is no evidence to suggest Epsom salts are in any way detrimental to a new mother, so our ladies are allowed to take them if they wish.’ She added that patients who could not get out of bed might require help with ‘douching’ and that most ladies stayed in hospital until their baby was six days old.
‘Do you have any questions?’ she asked, finally.
I told her that I didn’t have any questions just yet, although the truth was I had plenty. What was ‘douching’ and, more importantly, would I be allowed to see a baby being born? The mechanics of giving birth fascinated me. My mother had never disclosed any details of how the magical process worked, and I had never dared to ask. Mum got flustered when she had to tell me about periods, and after she had provided me with a sanitary belt and towels in my early teens we never spoke of such matters again. I’d studied biology, of course, and had a textbook understanding of reproduction and birth, but how a real-life baby emerged into the world from its mother’s womb was still a mystery to me.
At the end of the day I was delighted to spill out onto Oxford Street and hear the sound of music bubbling under the door of the Ritz. It had a reputation as one of the smartest dance halls in town and was far too expensive for a student like me, but I enjoyed being tantalisingly close to where it was ‘happening’.
I liked to listen to Radio Luxemburg whenever I could, and the DJs were forever reminding listeners that we lived in the ‘Swinging Sixties’. Here, in the heart of Manchester, I could feel the swing. It probably wasn’t anything like as exciting as in the heart of London, but I could certainly feel the beat. The evening air smelled of fish and chips and beer, and I inhaled deeply. If it weren’t for the fact I was clad in my nurse’s uniform, I’d have swung my hips before I skipped into the taxi that shuttled me back to the MRI.
When I got back to the nurses’ home after my first day at St Mary’s, I had a rare pow-wow with Nessa, Jo, Anne and Linda. Unusually, we happened to be on our way in at the same time, each one of us desperate for a bath and bed, but we agreed to snatch ten minutes together in the communal lounge area. It was drab in that room and there was often a home sister nosing around so we usually avoided it, but that evening we were too tired to care so we all slumped into the nearest available threadbare armchairs.
‘How’s the baby hospital?’ Linda asked me. ‘Delivered any yet?’
‘Course not!’ I laughed. ‘I haven’t even picked a baby up yet, let alone delivered one! I think I’m going to like it, though. It feels like a breath of fresh air. It’s like stepping out of a long, cold winter into spring after being here at the MRI.’
‘Wow!’ Jo said. ‘Sounds like someone’s found her vocation!’
‘Perhaps,’ I smiled, enjoying the thought. I definitely had a good vibe about the place, there was no doubt about it.
Jo then regaled us with a hilarious tale of how she was caught unawares by two dishy house doctors, Frank and Tom, who discovered it had been her birthday the week before. As she finished her night shift and walked down an empty corridor they pounced out of a broom cupboard with a couple of sheets, in which they swiftly wrapped her up.
‘My heart was pounding!’ she sa
id.
‘Bet it was,’ Linda said, giving a cheeky wink. ‘Which one do you fancy more – Frank or Tom?’
‘Well, they’re both gorgeous but I’d never get involved with a house doctor,’ she said. ‘We all know what they’re like: happy to flirt but underneath it all they’re as worn out as old men and too tired to do anything!’ Seemingly as an afterthought, she added: ‘Besides, you know I have a boyfriend, you rotten lot.’
After picking Jo up in the sheet, the cheeky young doctors pushed her into a wheelchair, whizzed her to a bathroom and dunked her in a bath of cold water. It was not an uncommon prank at the MRI, we learned.
‘I had to laugh,’ Jo said. ‘But I wanted to belt the pair of them. My uniform was still damp the next morning.’
‘Talking of uniform …’ Linda chuckled. ‘Guess who’s been a naughty girl?’
‘You!’ we all chimed. Linda had been heading for trouble since a few weeks earlier she’d finally cracked and asked Cynthia Weaver for advice on how to shorten the hem of her dress.
‘Honestly, it was only just on the knee,’ Linda hooted. ‘Thank God Miss Morgan has gone. Miss Bell still gave me a pretty tough telling off, but she didn’t pull the stitches out in the middle of the corridor as old Miss Morgan would have done.’
‘I’ll be keeping my eye on you from now on, Nurse Mochri!’ Linda thrust out her chest in a fine impersonation of Miss Bell, which made us all laugh.
Nessa expressed her sadness at Janice’s departure. She had been the last to know, it seemed, and never even got the chance to say goodbye. We all reassured her that it was nothing personal. Janice had wanted to slip away quietly and none of us had heard from her since, despite asking her to keep in touch.
‘It seems such a shame to walk away with nothing, not even friends,’ Nessa said. ‘When you think of poor Cynthia … What she wouldn’t give to be able to finish the course.’
We all looked at Nessa expectantly. ‘What’s happened to Cynthia?’ Linda asked.
The pair of us had been with her just a few weeks earlier, when she taught us how use some clever embroidery to customise a couple of handbags we picked up at the market.
Nessa had fallen quiet. She had not expected to be the one to deliver this news and didn’t like taking centre stage, but all eyes were on her.
‘Cynthia was diagnosed with a serious heart condition last week. She has a hole in her heart and needs to have open-heart surgery. She’s being treated on Ward S2.’
We all just gaped. Cynthia was a nurse, not a patient. She always looked tired, but then again we all did. There had been nothing to indicate she had such a serious condition, although I did recall her paying several visits to the sick bay of late.
‘Apparently her lips had started to go blue quite a lot, but she hadn’t thought anything of it,’ Nessa explained. ‘That was, until she collapsed on a ward at the end of a night shift. Hopefully we’ll be allowed to visit her soon.’
‘They can do remarkable things now,’ Jo interjected, trying to be positive. ‘Look what they did in South Africa.’
Surgeon Christiaan Barnard had carried out the world’s first heart transplant just before the previous Christmas. I remembered there was tinsel hanging in the dining room when I discussed it with a group of other nurses. The Pill had become available to unmarried women around the same time, which I recalled had been another subject for debate – one we were rather more animated about, to tell the truth.
As student nurses we may not have been at the cutting edge of medical breakthroughs, but we certainly felt proud to be a small part of such a pioneering profession, and we chewed over such news whenever we got the chance.
Nessa, Jo, Anne, Linda and I all knew that Christiaan Barnard’s ground-breaking transplant patient died within weeks of receiving his new heart, but none of us made reference to that fact.
‘Poor Cynthia,’ said Linda, who had blanched. ‘Why do people have to get ill?’
Nobody had an answer, and I knew Linda well enough to realise her question was as much about her mum’s cancer as it was about Cynthia. I knew her mum’s condition was deteriorating, and that Linda was very worried about her.
I went to bed that night with Linda’s words pressing on my mind: why do people have to get ill? It was a question without an answer, and one that made me feel all the more grateful for my placement at St Mary’s, where the days were filled with new life rather than sickness and death. Perhaps Jo was right. Perhaps I had found my vocation, working at the maternity hospital. I wasn’t quite sure about being an obstetric nurse as I didn’t know much about the job at that stage, but I certainly wanted to find out more. I fell asleep looking forward to climbing into the taxi the next day, travelling into the beating heart of the city and taking care of all those tiny little babies and their mums.
Chapter Six
‘Nurse Lawton, you have been granted permission to witness a birth if you come quickly’
‘I’m happy to see you’re working so well here at St Mary’s,’ Sister Rose said one morning as I reported for duty. She had a small transistor radio on her desk, and I could just make out the DJ announcing the Rolling Stones’ new single, ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’. As the record crackled onto the airways I couldn’t help tuning in, and I inadvertently tapped my foot in time to the music.
Sister Rose switched off the radio instantly and gave me a stern look, as if to say, ‘Let’s not be having any of that here.’
‘As I was saying,’ she went on firmly, ‘I want you to know that if you continue in the same vein I shall be giving you an excellent report to take back to the MRI. I believe you have the makings of a very good obstetric nurse.’
I felt myself blush. I hadn’t expected such a compliment. I still had more than a year to go before I even qualified as a nurse, let alone made any decisions about my future career. I had been telling myself to take things steadily, take my time and weigh up my options carefully, but my reaction to Sister Rose’s compliment made me realise how much this placement meant to me. I was invigorated by her words. I wanted to excel here, because I was starting to believe it was the gateway to my future.
‘If you would like to broaden your horizons, I can arrange for you to observe a delivery,’ Sister Rose proposed.
‘Oh, yes please!’ I said enthusiastically. ‘I should like that very much.’
‘Excellent! Please attend to the milk kitchen this morning, and I will see what I can do.’
I loved the milk kitchen. Making up the feeds made me feel very useful, and even though this seemingly mundane task was assigned to me every day I always took the utmost care in sterilising the bottles and measuring out the powdered milk.
The very first time I held a baby, one of the other midwives showed me how to tilt the bottle at just the right angle so as not to allow the newborn to gulp air. The tiny boy, who was no more than a few hours old, attached his rosebud lips greedily to the teat and sucked contentedly. I was captivated. It was an honour to be feeding a brand new baby, feeling his warmth against me and smelling the sweetness of his delicate head. I had a perfect little life in my hands.
‘Makes your heart melt, doesn’t it?’ the midwife said, seeing the enthralled expression on my face.
‘Yes, it does!’ I replied. ‘That’s exactly the right phrase. I could get used to this!’
The milk kitchen was housed in a side room just off the ward, and each day I would boil water in a giant-sized metal kettle while I washed the glass bottles and rinsed out the brown rubber teats that needed to be stretched over the top of them. All the equipment then had to be placed in a cage and lowered into a large metal steriliser unit, which hissed and boiled and spat. Meanwhile, I measured out the boiled water and carefully counted each spoonful of dried milk powder into a large stainless steel jug and mixed it up with a sterilised spoon. Retrieving the bottles was always slightly unnerving, as they had to be hooked out of the steriliser cage with small forceps, taking care to tip out any drops of water, lest they wo
uld splatter your uniform or burn your hands.
Pouring the yellow-tinted liquid into the bottles was an exact science. I would typically make up two dozen batches of two-ounce and four-ounce feeds, as that was about as much as the tiny mites could manage in one sitting. I’d been shown how to squeeze a few drips of milk onto the inside of my wrist to check it was not too hot, and once the correct temperature was reached I was able to distribute the bottles around the ward, leaving one at the end of each bed ready for the babies to be woken and fed, always at exactly the same time.
Occasionally, if there were some milk left over, I would hide away in the kitchen and discreetly have a little drink of it myself. I liked the sweet taste, and it helped keep my energy levels up.
‘Have you saved enough for my Tommy?’ one friendly patient, Rosemary, asked me one day.
‘Pardon?’ I replied, flustered.
She looked at my mouth and gestured for me to wipe around my lips.
‘Oh!’ I exclaimed, feeling extremely embarrassed.
‘It don’t bother me!’ she chuckled. ‘Don’t expect Sister would be best pleased, though!’
I enjoyed chatting to the women. There was something magical about being involved in their lives at such a momentous time. Despite being tired out after giving birth, they were nearly always in good spirits and their shared experience created an open and friendly atmosphere on the ward.
Funnily enough, conversations were hardly ever about babies. The new mothers cooed over them and admired each other’s newborns, of course, but the women didn’t obsess about potential ailments, pre-school provision and the pros and cons of certain foods as they tend to do today. Instead, they talked about the latest episode of The Prisoner or Coronation Street they’d seen on telly, swapped crochet patterns for matinée jackets and booties and bickered over whether Tom Jones was more of a dish than Elvis.
The Midwife's Here!: The Enchanting True Story of One of Britain's Longest Serving Midwives Page 9