The Midwife's Here!: The Enchanting True Story of One of Britain's Longest Serving Midwives

by Linda Fairley

  I was photographed with several unsettled babies until I eventually found a contented little boy who didn’t cry in my arms. I didn’t know his name and didn’t think to ask or look at his name tag, as I honestly didn’t imagine our photograph would ever see the light of day. How wrong I was! That picture is now on the cover of this book, and I would dearly love to find out what became of my little co-star. Perhaps now I will?

  I remember driving my mum all over town in my little Austin to admire the posters when they were pasted up on giant billboards and bus shelters in December 1971.

  ‘Oooh Linda, look at you!’ she beamed at every stop. ‘Don’t you look wonderful! Haven’t you done well? Can we go and find another?’

  She said the same thing each time we stopped at traffic lights and bus stops dotted far and wide within a thirty-mile radius of the hospital. Adverts eventually appeared in the local papers too, along with the slogan ‘I’m crying out for you, Nurse’, which was a call to recruit more midwives for the new unit. ‘Any new hospital is only as successful and efficient as its staff, and so we’re relying on you, the trained midwifery sisters, pupil midwives and staff midwives,’ it said alongside my photograph, which was pasted in front of a picture of the new maternity unit.

  Graham was chuffed to bits too. ‘Successful and efficient, that’s my Linda,’ he chortled when he saw me smiling out of the pages of the Ashton Reporter as he ate his Rice Krispies one morning. ‘I’m sure you’ll have folk flocking to the new hospital after this.’

  For me, this campaign was so much more than a publicity drive; it was an incredible personal endorsement. ‘That’s me, I am a midwife!’ I marvelled each time I saw my own image smiling back at me as I drove through Stalybridge, Hyde or Droylsden. If Graham was with me I’d feign embarrassment, but the truth was I was thrilled to bits by those pictures. They made me feel I had arrived at last. I was recognised in the street and in the newsagent’s once or twice, which also gave me a buzz, but the most memorable occasion was in the dead of night, when I delivered the first of several babies in the hospital car park. I will never forget the frantic young man who ran into the maternity unit, having left his labouring wife propped up against a wall, alone and in the freezing cold.

  ‘Come quick, Nurse!’ he shouted, charging onto the delivery ward. ‘She’s in the car park! She can’t move!’

  I had my head in some notes and when I looked up he appeared stunned. ‘It’s you!’ he spluttered. ‘Please come quick! My wife’s having the baby in the car park!’

  Mavis Crowther, a smashing auxiliary who was always extremely helpful to me, appeared at my side in a flash and offered to help. ‘I’ve seen a few of these in my time,’ she winked. I gratefully accepted her offer as I collected a pack of instruments, some towels and blankets and ran outside. Mavis, who was in her fifties and short and plump, grabbed her coat and scuttled along behind us as fast as her legs would carry her, clearly enjoying the excitement of it all.

  We found the lady, Mrs Miller, bent over in agony and clawing at a wall in the car park with one hand while trying to hold the baby’s head back with the other.

  ‘The midwife’s here!’ the panic-stricken Mr Miller shouted to his wife as he sprinted towards her. ‘It’s the one …’

  ‘Aaaaarrrrgh!’ came her reply. ‘I’m gonna kill you, leavin’ me out ’ere in the dark! Aaaaargh!’

  ‘But you said you couldn’t move,’ Mr Miller argued. ‘You said you couldn’t take another step …’

  Wise old Mavis swooped in at this point and asked Mr Miller to remove his coat. ‘We need to make a privacy screen for your wife,’ she instructed, which made me smirk. I knew she was simply trying to distract him. It was 3 a.m., pitch black save for the glow of a nearby street lamp, and we were the only people in the car park. There was no need for a privacy guard, but it gave Mr Miller something to do to keep him quiet. Mavis also asked him to stuff a blanket down the front of his shirt, to warm it up ready to wrap the baby in.

  I helped Mrs Miller out of her coat and, with Mavis’s help, got her to lie down on it. She was clearly in a great deal of pain, but she was calmer now and did everything I asked her to do, even managing to joke: ‘Mind me coat, it cost a bomb.’ I could see the baby’s head bulging through her knickers so I took out my scissors and cut her undergarments away. Moments later, a hearty cry cut through the damp and bitterly cold December air.

  ‘It’s a boy!’ I declared. The baby had arrived so quickly there had been no rotation of the body, as would happen under normal circumstances. He was delivered completely in one mighty push, one of the fastest deliveries on my record. Mrs Miller burst into tears and her husband, still holding his coat aloft, sounded choked with emotion as he asked if the little mite was all right.

  ‘He looks absolutely fine to me,’ I said, cutting the cord swiftly with ice-cold fingers, and feeling very grateful we had delivery packs at our disposal, with all the instruments sterilised and ready to use.

  I knew we had to get this baby and mother inside in the warm as quickly as possible. Labour and delivery may have taken place in a sub-zero car park, but Mrs Miller would be much more comfortable if stage three, the delivery of the placenta, took place inside the hospital.

  As I wrapped the baby in the blanket Mr Miller had warmed inside his shirt, Mavis stepped forward, unbuttoned her coat and popped the baby inside, snug against her chest. This left a very relieved Mr Miller free to cuddle his wife while we arranged to have a wheelchair brought out.

  ‘Oh I do love kitchen midwifery,’ Mavis chortled later, when Mrs Miller was safely inside, the placenta cleanly delivered and her eight-pound son Keith was sleeping soundly in a cot beside her. ‘That was exciting, don’t you think, Linda?’

  Kitchen midwifery was a term I’d heard older colleagues like Mavis use to describe deliveries that took place in unusual or unexpected places, often without the correct equipment.

  ‘Well, it was OK,’ I said cautiously, thinking that exciting wasn’t quite the word I would use. Alarming and dramatic were perhaps more apt. ‘Mr and Mrs Miller will have a good story to tell little Keith when he’s older,’ I added.

  Mavis laughed. ‘Yes, especially as they had the hospital’s most famous midwife deliver him!’

  I’d been so focused on delivering this baby safely, I’d completely forgotten Mr Miller’s reaction when he first saw me on the ward. He later explained to Mavis that he had seen my poster smiling down from an advertising hoarding as he waited impatiently at a set of red lights on the way to the hospital.

  ‘Fancy that,’ Mavis chuckled. ‘As if Mr Miller hadn’t had enough surprises for one night without running into you as well!’ Giving me a warm smile, she added, ‘Lucky man, I reckon. You’re a wonderful little midwife.’

  Mavis’s generous words meant a great deal to me. She was an auxiliary, not a nurse or midwife, but she had many years of experience under her belt and I valued her opinion enormously. Mavis was magic, and auxiliaries like her played a vital role in hospital life.

  I went home later feeling on top of the world. I was twenty-three years old and, thanks to the posters, I was being publicly hailed as a fine example of a competent qualified nurse and midwife. What more could I wish for? Mavis’s endorsement was the icing on the cake. Days like that completely validated all of my training, all of my hard work.

  I thought about the homesickness, the worry, the blood, the sweat and all those tears I’d mopped up over the years, many of them my own. All of it, every hardship and hurdle I’d endured as a student nurse and pupil midwife, had been worthwhile.

  I’d made it, and this midwife was here to stay.

  Picture Section

  This was taken during my first year of training at the Manchester Royal Infirmary aged 18.

  I can’t help but chuckle at how young and inexperienced I was! Despite nursing not being for me, I’m so grateful for all the invaluable experience and knowledge I gained there, and for the many amazing people I met along the way.<
br />
  courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

  Harrytown High School in Romiley, Cheshire, where my dream of becoming a nurse began.

  © D. J. Cunningham, Head Teacher, Harrytown Catholic High School

  ‘Please promise me, Linda, that you will always work hard.’ The words of Sister Mary Francis (far left) still echo clearly in my mind. I hope I’ve made her proud.

  Sixth form at Harrytown. I’m kneeling in the front row, fourth from the left.

  A copy of the reference Mrs Ingham wrote after I completed the obstetric training course at St Mary’s Hospital. Without these kind words I’d never be where I am today (NB Mrs Ingham put the wrong date on the report – it was actually 1968 and not 1969).

  St Mary’s, in the centre of Manchester, where I saw a baby delivered for the first time and began my dream of becoming a midwife.

  courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

  This picture was taken on my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary. I’m on the far left next to Dad, Mum, my brother John and his wife Nevim.

  Love’s young dream. I was 19 and Graham 18.

  Four years later on holiday in Greece in 1971, our first time abroad together.

  Our wedding day, 22 November 1969. I felt a million dollars in my dress from Marshall & Snelgrove. I was so excited about what the future would hold, and the icing on the cake was when I was certified a qualified MRI nurse a few weeks later (inset).

  © Photoshot

  © The Times/NI Syndication

  I soon learned that life wasn’t all rosy. Some parts of Manchester were terribly poor, and these streets are typical of the ones I’d race down on my Honda to the aid of women like Moira Petty, whose story still haunts me today.

  © The Times/NI Syndication

  © The Times/NI Syndication

  A copy of the brochure with my photo used to advertise the new maternity unit at Ashton General Hospital, later renamed Tameside Hospital, where I still work today.

  I was so proud to have been chosen to represent the hospital; it was a real stamp of approval after all the hard years of training. It’s such a privilege to be a midwife, which is why – forty years later – I continue to do the job I love.

  Epilogue

  The new maternity unit opened to patients on 4 December 1971. I wasn’t on duty that day, but I remember feeling incredibly excited to be on the cusp of a new stage of my career. As I always do at times of change, I felt a little apprehensive too, thinking about stepping into this brand new environment. The unit had cost £2 million, and expectations were running high. As the poster girl I would have to set a particularly good example, and putting a foot wrong was simply not an option. I said a few prayers and unloaded some thoughts into a notebook to help prepare myself for my first shift there the following day.

  This is what was going through my mind on the evening of 4 December 1971, while Mrs Kathleen Randle was making local history by giving birth to her nine-pound son Jarrod Matthew Rohan Randle, the first baby born at the new unit, at 6.25 p.m. that day.

  Life is very good, but that makes me a bit nervous. I think Sister Mary Francis has a lot to answer for! ‘You have to take the rough with the smooth, girls,’ she used to say. I can hear her saying it, and so when things go well I always worry, just a little bit. Please God, help me be strong, come what may. I have to pinch myself sometimes to believe I am actually delivering babies for a living!!! Graham and I are going to start ‘trying’ for a baby of our own next year. Fingers crossed for that. I don’t think we’ll have any problems. I can’t believe I am going to be a sister very soon. Help me be the best I can. I know it will be really tough sometimes, but I can cope. I don’t think anything can surprise me now! I want to always be a midwife, until I retire that is – not that I’m thinking of that just yet!

  It makes me laugh out loud when I recall my words, because even today I still can’t imagine retiring. I tried to leave Tameside Hospital, as Ashton General was later renamed, when I turned sixty in 2008, but I hated not working as a midwife and I lasted just three weeks before I asked for my job back and became a part-time community midwife.

  So, the midwife is still here, more than four decades on and counting. I’m honoured to have become Tameside Hospital’s longest-serving midwife, and to have been celebrated as one of the UK’s longest-serving midwives as well. It’s an achievement that makes me feel as proud as I did when I saw my twenty-three-year-old self smiling out of those posters back in 1971, but of course that’s not my motivation for still doing the job.

  I continue to serve the women of Tameside, some of whom I actually delivered many moons ago, because each and every birth still thrills me to the core. Feeling the warmth of a newborn baby in my hands is honestly as joyful and exhilarating today as when I nervously delivered my first baby, little Lorinda Louise Willis, back in September 1970.

  It tickles me no end when I remember thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think anything can surprise me now!’ You never stop being surprised when you are a midwife. The job takes you into the hearts and homes of so many wonderful and interesting women, at such a significant time in their life, that you never know what is in store.

  Little did I know back then that I had over four decades of surprises ahead of me, some more heartbreaking than I could ever have imagined, others so touching, so funny or so uplifting they would take my breath way. There wasn’t enough room for them in one book so I’m currently working on another.

  My job has helped keep me going through heartbreaks of my own, and when I remember my youthful hope and expectation that Graham and I would not encounter any problems, I gasp at my naïvety. We did have the baby we longed for and our son Jonathan was born in 1974, but sadly Graham and I grew apart and separated when Jonathan was just a toddler.

  I am sixty-four years old now and I know that only one thing in life is certain: babies keep coming, same as they always have, same as they always will. No mother on earth escapes without problems of one sort or another, whether they start at conception, birth or in the years of mothering that lie ahead. Why, then, do women keep having babies? It’s a question I’ve been asked many, many times, typically between ear-splitting screams, in the throes of a painful labour! The answer, of course, is achingly simple. Babies are our lifeblood. They make this world of ours go round and round. Babies enthral and inspire us, giving meaning and purpose to our lives, whoever we are and whatever we believe. That is why I feel so very privileged to be a midwife, and why I continue to do the job I love.

  No matter how many babies I deliver, each and every one is a miracle, connecting me to the world like nothing else, reminding me that we are all equal in the beginning, and in the end. It’s a great leveller, childbirth.

  Acknowledgements

  It has been a life-affirming experience to write this book, and I am grateful to many old friends and colleagues who have helped me recall the past. Some memories have made me shake with laughter and cringe with embarrassment, while others have reopened painful wounds and brought tears to my eyes. All have reminded me how very powerful nature is, what an absolute miracle it is to give birth, and what a great privilege it is to be a midwife.

  I would particularly like to thank the following people, who have all helped me to deliver this book, one way or another.

  My son Jonathan, daughter Fiona and son-in-law Peter, who have always been there, telling me how proud they are that their mum is writing her story.

  My brother John, himself a writer, telling me, ‘Yes, you can do it.’

  My friend Chris Pearce, also a midwife, who, when I doubted my memory, said, ‘Yes, I was there and it really did happen like that!’

  My colleagues at Tameside Hospital who have prompted my memory so many times.

  The women of Tameside who have been in my care over the years, without whom my story could not be told.

  Rachel Murphy, my ghostwriter, who is lik
e one of my family now, and writes from inside my head.

  Jonathan Conway, my literary agent, who would not take no for an answer.

  Anna Valentine at HarperCollins, for having faith in me and for enjoying this book so much she has asked me to write another one.

  To enable me to share my memories accurately without treading on anybody’s toes or breaching confidentiality, I have disguised the exact dates of some births and changed the names of some former colleagues and patients, but by no means all.

  The one and only Mrs Tattersall, for example, simply had to be identified and fêted as my inspirational community midwife mentor, as did Miss Bell, my astute Matron at the MRI, who somehow knew before I did that midwifery was the career for me. I am deeply indebted to both.

  Copyright

  This book is a work of non-fiction based on the author’s experiences.

  In order to protect privacy, names, identifying characteristics, dialogue and details have been changed or reconstructed.

  HarperElement

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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  Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

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  and HarperElement are trademarks of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  Published by HarperElement 2012

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  Linda Fairley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-0-00-744630-8

  THE MIDWIFE’S HERE. © Linda Fairley 2012. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.