The Baby Born in a Bus Stop (and Other Home Birth Stories) |Life of a Midwife Ep. 9

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0:42Unknown Midwife 1: For centuries, women have brought new life into the world within the walls of their own homes. Only more recent times has birth become something that many imagine beneath the brightness of hospital lights. Yet the older tradition still lives on and the home remains exactly where this most intimate of moments belongs.

1:06Unknown Midwife 1: In this episode we'll hear from two midwives who describe what it takes to guide a birth beyond the hospital walls. The first is Sheena who trained as a midwife in the 1970s and helped support one of the earliest home water births an experience that, at that time, was almost unheard of. And Marley, who has witnessed the raw, unpredictable beauty of home births, from calm, intimate deliveries to babies being born in unexpected locations. I'm Giovanna Fletcher, and from Happy Mum, this is Life of a Midwife.

1:48Unknown Midwife 1: Sheena was a nurse who discovered midwifery almost by accident. Over the years, she has learned to embrace the unknown again and again.

2:01Unknown Midwife 1: I'm not one of those people that kind of thought as a child, oh, that's what I want to do. Even though I had an aunt who we were very close to, who was a midwife, and she used to spend hours at our house because my parents looked after my grandparents, which were my aunt's parents as well. So she used to come and visit us a lot. She'd tell us stories about how she was working with mums and babies. And I'd sit and listen and think it was interesting, but it wasn't something that I thought, that's what I want to do. I went to be a nurse. I followed in my sister's footsteps. So I'm one of five girls.

2:38Unknown Midwife 1: One of my elder sisters was a nurse. I went to be a nurse the same as her, and I absolutely loved it. So I loved caring for sick people.

2:52Unknown Midwife 1: During my training, we had to do 12 weeks where we could choose either geriatrics, old people, or maternity or psychiatry. And I chose maternity. So I spent some time working within the local maternity service as a student nurse. And that was very different to being a student midwife, because you didn't really get involved in the birth or caring for women and babies. But what you did do was a lot of cleaning so I was kind of experiencing how to clean. One day, an amazing day, one of the senior midwives shouted at me and in those days they used to call us by our surname and she shouted, Murray, Murray be quick, come in this room.

3:37Unknown Midwife 1: So I went in this birth room, they were called labour wards and they were really tiny rooms. The woman that was in there didn't have a partner because in those days husbands or partners didn't go in the room with a woman to having baby they were totally she was totally alone and she said get some gloves on this midwife said get some gloves on and i thought she wanted some new gloves for her but i was a bit confused but she wanted me to put these gloves on and i did the baby's head was being born she told me to put my hands on the baby's head and she put her hands over my hands and and helped me to guide the baby out.

4:17Unknown Midwife 1: Didn't really need any guiding, the baby just came out and I was like whoa! I hadn't really had any chance to meet the woman at all. I was just blown away because she allowed me to do this and I wasn't expecting it because of course I I was just cleaning and I was so excited about it and I was hugging the mum and congratulating her and everything and she was she was really happy I think it was a third baby and then of course I ran out to ring my mum to tell her what had happened and that made me think about then when I finished my nursing about going in to be a midwife but I didn't really want to do it in the hospital that I was working at learning to be a nurse because I didn't really it was a very old maternity unit and I didn't really like it so I went across just into the next town there was another maternity service here they had a new unit and you know I felt really brave going to another hospital because it is a bit weird moving once you've done your nursing you only did a year and it was definitely just a training it wasn't necessarily a thorough education in those days but now it's a degree in midwifery and it's in universities but then it was actually the training took place actually in the maternity unit so you were in a room above where women were giving birth learning to be a midwife and then you went down into the the wards etc to do your practical so it was very different to what it is like today

5:56Unknown Midwife 1: At first I didn't like being a midwife because I felt that really you were just a bystander in someone else's journey and whilst you were needed to guide and support it wasn't really the same job satisfaction as when someone was sick and really ill and you could really make them feel better just by plumping pillows up. I didn't feel the same job satisfaction until I qualified and then I learned lots about really what really mattered to be a midwife. As time went on and I had my own children, these things became more important to me. I was working as a community midwife and this was, I think it was the early 1990s.

6:44Unknown Midwife 1: After I'd worked in the maternity home and then when the maternity home closed because of pressure, various reasons it closed. I was transferred to work as a midwife in the big hospital and I really didn't want to do that but I knew I had to if I wanted to continue practicing as a midwife I had to go there so I then rotated all around the different areas of practice so I worked on the labour ward, delivery suite, I worked in the postnatal area, antenatal area and then I applied for and was successful in getting a job as a community midwife and that was one of the best jobs I had because I was then immersed in my community where I live and working as it I didn't ride a bike around but I drove my car around I was seeing women in the antenatal period and the post-naked period and sometimes if they chose to have their baby at home I saw them all the way through so I became a family friend and even if I didn't do the birth if I wasn't present to facilitate the birth.

7:44Unknown Midwife 1: I still had great relationships with the people that I cared for, and I absolutely loved it. And even now, when I'm out and about, sometimes I'm out having a meal, or I'm in a shopping centre or wherever, I'll get people coming up to me and saying, you know, you were my midwife. And those people now have got children that are having children. and so it's you know it's it's that's been that's been one of the joys of it

8:20Unknown Midwife 1: I'd never even seen a birth in water in 1990 never mind help somebody to have a baby in water this particular woman wanted to have her baby at home and she didn't want any doctors around If the doctor had to be there, he had to sit on the stair steps. But I was allowed to be there with another midwife. I was up for it, so supporting her choice, but I felt it was really important that I learnt what to do. And how can you learn what to do if nobody else is doing it? So I had to watch videos, we had to create a guideline with senior midwives and I had to get loads of support. Helen, she was called, gave birth to her baby boy in water with her little girl around.

9:08Unknown Midwife 1: I was there with this other midwife and helped her to give birth. It was absolutely amazing, this experience. And I felt so proud of her because she got what she wanted. She was full of joy and proud of myself and the other midwife who was there with me. That was a really big thing for us to do because it was something very, very different. And I didn't get, you know, loads of experience doing it before I did it. And I was scared. I was afraid. But I had to be, appear to be confident. And I was, you know, inside feeling really, really fearful. In fact, I almost dived in the pool when the baby was born.

9:50Unknown Midwife 1: And my sleeves were really wet. So all the, there's loads of photographs of post-birth. And I've got like wet sleeves. I've got my radical midwife's t-shirt on, but I've got wet sleeves. I use that when I talk to students now because I talk about how it's really important for us to have courage when we have compassion. So I knew when I met Helen, it was so important to her to have this birth experience because she'd had a difficult time having a first baby and she was almost pleading with me to facilitate this choice. So I had to have courage to do that. So I talk about the importance of courage when we're helping women to get what they want.

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11:27Unknown Midwife 1: Marley has spent 17 years working across every corner of maternity care, from the intensity of the labour ward to the fast pace of triage. But it's the community and the closeness of caring for women in their own homes that has always meant the most to her.

11:47Unknown Midwife 2: Before I started my midwifery degree, I was working as a maternity assistant because back then the places on university courses were so competitive that if you had experience in the maternity setting, you're more likely to get onto a course. so I was working as a maternity assistant in a hospital and I went in to help with a cesarean I was what they call a runner so I would just be running around and handing people things and writing on the board when the operation started I think I must have been swaying a little bit because a midwife came up behind me and I remember her holding my shoulders I think she thought I was gonna I was gonna fall over or something like that but yeah I held it together I was really surprised at how quickly the baby came out I didn't realize that in a cesarean from the moment you start to the baby coming out is about seven eight minutes it's very very quick so that kind of shocked me a little bit

12:54fast forward to when I was a student midwife my first birth experience as a student

13:00Unknown Midwife 2: was actually a home birth so I was working in the community with my mentor and we got called out to a home birth and it was just just so emotional like I was really trying to hold it together you know this woman she just got up on the bed and just gave birth to this baby no problems at all and I was just like wow even though I had actually had a child um I mean he was I think he about five by the time I'd started training to be a midwife. So I knew what childbirth was about. You know, I'd been through it myself. But actually watching someone else give birth, it was, yeah, it was extraordinary.

13:41Unknown Midwife 2: And I remember thinking about it for weeks afterwards until I'd managed to see another one.

13:50Unknown Midwife 2: If I could have had a home birth for any of my children, I certainly would have, without a doubt. everything just seems a lot calmer. You know, obviously there's not machines beeping, there's not people running up and down the corridor, you're not hearing other people in other rooms making noises, there's not visitors coming in and out from other rooms or other bays. You don't feel like you're on a clock or on a watch as much, so it's a totally different experience. Then, you know, the partner wants to go off and make himself a cup of tea or coffee or get himself something to eat. Yeah, it definitely is a different experience.

14:26Unknown Midwife 2: I was probably about three or four years into being qualified and I was on call and I got called out to a home birth and we always had a backup midwife. So one midwife would go out and then when we knew that the birth was imminent, we'd call the other midwife to come along and help. My colleague was the first midwife. I was a backup. So I came and I thought I was walking into this woman about to give birth, which she was, but things weren't quite going to plan. So the baby, it turned out the baby was actually in a bit of an awkward position. So the baby was back to back. So the baby's spine was kind of running along downside.

15:04Unknown Midwife 2: Mum's spine rather than the spine being facing the front of the belly. So we call it sunny side up or back to back or the medical term is occiput posterior. and that was making it incredibly long for the baby to come down into the birth canal and for mum to push the baby out. So in the end, after a long time of kind of getting in different positions and moving her around, the baby's heart rate started dropping a little bit. So, you know, we spoke to her and we sort of said, look, it might be worthwhile getting you transferred into hospital. The protocol was to call the ambulance. So we called the ambulance.

15:37Unknown Midwife 2: We managed to gather her up and help her to the ambulance. And it was decided that I would go in the ambulance with her and my colleague would drive behind the ambulance and follow us. So we're in the ambulance now. So we're trying to strap her to the table and, you know, a woman in labour about to give birth, it's very, very difficult to do that. So I was saying to the paramedics, OK, I'll sit here and I'll hold her, it's OK, we haven't got to strap her down. All of a sudden she got up onto all fours, onto this table in the ambulance and I heard her pushing and I shouted to the paramedic and the drivers who were obviously in the front of the van, pull over just pull over right now because I couldn't deliver a baby whilst the ambulance is swaying from side to side you know it was just ridiculous so they pulled over into a bus stop in the middle of the night and the baby was born and I think what it was is because I think it was a movement from her getting up from her living room walking to the ambulance getting up into different positions then going on to all fours and I think that helped the baby to rotate round because all of a sudden this baby came out.

16:41Unknown Midwife 2: Then we just carried on our journey to the hospital because, you know, we was almost there anyway. The only downside is that with the birth certificate, they have to put the location of where the baby was born. So that child, they ever want to look at their birth certificate, they'll see that they were born in an ambulance in a bus stop.

17:03Unknown Midwife 2: I had twin babies, my own. And so imagine I'm working a night shift when I've got twin babies who are waking up in the night wanting to be fed, right? So I was so sleep-deprived. Obviously, you know, got called out. My husband was with the babies. Literally, as I got there, the husband opened the door and I'm running up the stairs and she's already lying on the bed pushing this baby out got there just in the nick of time but I was sort of like flapping around all over the place you know caught the baby everything was fine the baby was fine so I was like right okay I need to get the placenta out um god so the placenta came and I was I was looking around for this for like a kidney uh dish the kidney shaped dish like you know the paper mache ones the gray ones so I grabbed one out my bag I was so disorganised I mean I was just delirious.

18:01Unknown Midwife 2: I've put this placenta in this dish and then I stood up and where I plonked my bag on the floor next to the bed as I was running in trying to get in there to catch this baby before it came out I've tripped over the bag with this placenta in this dish and I dropped the placenta all over their cream carpet. And I was so mortified. I was so mortified and I was like, oh my gosh, I am so sorry. And the thing is, when you put a placenta in the dish, the dish is kind of filled with blood as well. So it's like the placenta and the membranes and all the blood and everything just everywhere. And I was just like, oh no, what am I going to do?

18:47I didn't know whether to go back to mum and the baby

18:50Unknown Midwife 2: to make sure they were OK. They were fine. They were absolutely fine. I just wanted to put some more blankets over them to keep them warm. Or to ask Dad to get some bicarbonate of soda or vinegar or something to try and get this blood out of the carpet. And he said, it's all right, don't worry about it. He said, we've got a professional carpet cleaner that can come around and sort that out. And I'm like, oh my gosh. We used to do a home birth visit before they give birth and we'd go through the things to get to buy to get ready for a home birth. And one of the things is, look, if you've got any flooring that you want to protect, i.e.

19:22Unknown Midwife 2: carpets, get some plastic sheets. So they had it, but because it happened so quickly in the middle of the night, the husband didn't have time to get the plastic sheets out and put them down. So it was literally just like, yeah, she woke up and she was having contractions and the baby came really, really quickly. I was just mortified. Absolutely mortified. I've never forgotten that. I've never forgotten.

19:58Unknown Midwife 1: Thank you so much for listening. Please do like, subscribe and leave us a review. We would love to know what you think. And if you're a midwife and would like to take part in this series, you can find contact details in the podcast description.

20:50Unknown Midwife 1: We'll be right back. now through July 6th at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home.