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The Midwife’s Here!: The Enchanting True Story of One of Britain’s Longest Serving Midwives
Linda Fairley
The Sunday Times bestseller‘Delivering my first baby is a memory that will stay with me forever. Just feeling the warmth of a newborn head in your hands, that new life, there’s honestly nothing like it… I’ve since brought more than 2,200 babies into the world, and I still tingle with excitement every time.’It’s the summer of 1968 and St Mary’s Maternity Hospital in Manchester is a place from a bygone age. It is filled with starched white hats and full skirts, steaming laundries and milk kitchens, strict curfews and bellowed commands. It is a time of homebirths, swaddling and dangerous anaesthetics. It was this world that Linda Fairley entered as a trainee midwife aged just 19 years old.From the moment Linda delivered her first baby – racing across rain-splattered Manchester street on her trusty moped in the dead of night – Linda knew she’d found her vocation. ‘The midwife’s here!’ they always exclaimed, joined in their joyful chorus by relieved husbands, mothers, grandmothers and whoever else had found themselves in close proximity to a woman about to give birth.Under the strict supervision of community midwife Mrs Tattershall, Linda’s gruellingly long days were spent on overcrowded wards pinning Terry nappies, making up bottles and sterilizing bedpans – and above all helping women in need. Her life was a succession of emergencies, successes and tragedies: a never-ending chain of actions which made all the difference between life and death.There was Mrs Petty who gave birth in heartbreaking poverty; Mrs Drew who confided to Linda that the triplets she was carrying were not in fact her husband’s; and Muriel Turner, whose dangerously premature baby boy survived – against all the odds. Forty years later Linda’s passion for midwifery burns as bright as ever as she is now celebrated as one of Britain’s longest-serving midwives, still holding the lives of mothers and children in her own two hands.Rich in period detail and told with a good dose of Manchester humour, The Midwife’s Here! is the extraordinary, heartwarming tale of a truly inspiring woman.
Linda Fairley
The Midwife’s Here!
The Enchanting True Story of One of Britain’s Longest Serving Midwives
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
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
and HarperElement are trademarks of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
Published by HarperElement 2012
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
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.
Source ISBN: 9780007446308
Ebook Edition © APRIL 2012 ISBN: 9780007446315
Version 2016-10-17
Dedication
For Peter, who told me I could write this book.
He was so proud of me, and I know he’d have loved it.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Preface
Chapter One
‘It feels like we’re in the Army!’
Chapter Two
‘I really am becoming an MRI nurse!’
Chapter Three
‘I didn’t expect to be looking after people who are actually ill’
Chapter Four
‘People are dying … This is harder than I thought’
Chapter Five
‘I have come to tender my resignation, Matron’
Chapter Six
‘Nurse Lawton, you have been granted permission to witness a birth if you come quickly’
Chapter Seven
‘Unless you ladder your stockings, to my mind you haven’t made a good job of dealing with a cardiac arrest!’
Chapter Eight
‘T’ Eagle ’as landed’
Chapter Nine
‘To qualify as a midwife you’ll need to deliver forty babies in ten months’
Chapter Ten
‘Feeling the warmth of a baby’s head in your hands, that new life, I’d honestly never experienced anything like it’
Chapter Eleven
‘Knickers and tights off, ladies!’
Chapter Twelve
‘Get these birds out of here, NOW! Where’s the hygiene? Tell me that!’
Chapter Thirteen
‘So you’ve had the baby? … Let’s have a cup of tea and a cigarette then’
Chapter Fourteen
‘She’s at top o’ stairs!’
Chapter Fifteen
‘He’s not touching her privates!’
Chapter Sixteen
‘Your baby is showing signs of life … He’s alive!’
Picture Section
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Read an excerpt from Linda Fairley's new book (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright
About the Publisher
‘Go, and do thou likewise.’
Prologue
‘The midwife’s here!’ Mick Drew exclaimed, nudging his wife Geraldine as I approached her bedside.
Mick gave me a broad smile that was filled with a mixture of gratitude and relief. It was a look I was growing accustomed to seeing on the faces of husbands with expectant wives, and I had learned that the more imminent the birth, the more appreciative and thankful the smile became.
It was early 1971 and Geraldine was about two months away from giving birth, but she was in the highly unusual position of expecting naturally conceived triplets, which no doubt more than trebled her loving husband’s concern.
‘Flamin ’eck, how long? I’ll go round the twist!’ Geraldine had balked when I outlined her birth plan a few months earlier, explaining that her multiple pregnancy automatically meant she would be admitted to the antenatal ward in Ashton General Hospital for bed rest when she was seven months pregnant.
‘That’s the rule, I’m afraid,’ I explained, thinking it was unfortunate Geraldine wouldn’t benefit from our brand new maternity unit, which wasn’t due to open until the end of the year. ‘Don’t you worry, we’ll take good care of you in here and I’m sure you’ll enjoy the break.’
Geraldine tittered. ‘Well, I suppose rules is rules, though I’m not sure how my old man will take it!’
She and Mick already had three young children, and quite how he was going to cope alone with them while his wife was in hospital was not yet apparent.
‘I suppose it’ll be good training for him,’ Geraldine said cheerfully the last time I saw her at antenatal clinic. ‘Seeing as how we’re going to end up with six! He’ll have to get used to doing his share and keeping an eye on three of ’em.’
I was pleased to see Geraldine had an easy-going nature and was quick to see the funny side of life. She would doubtless need those qualities to cope with a brood that size.
‘As for me, I’ll just have to get meself a pile of good mags to keep me busy, won’t I?’ she winked. ‘I’m sure I’ll cope.’
It hadn’t taken Geraldine long to settle herself into the antenatal ward, aided amiably by Mick, who was a round, ruddy-cheeked man who visited often and had such a spring in his step he appeared to bounce down the corridor, flared brown trousers swishing round his ankles.
Every day he wheeled in a little tartan shopping trolley of provisions for his wife and greeted her by planting a huge kiss on both cheeks, and then on the lips. ‘One for each baby,’ he always beamed before handing Geraldine a packet of sweets or a paper bag containing drinks and magazines.
‘How’s she doing, Nurse?’ he always asked me earnestly. ‘Everything as it should be?’
‘Yes, everything seems fine,’ I reassured him. ‘Your wife is doing very well indeed.’
‘Terrific!’ he grinned. ‘She’s a coper, my Geraldine, that she is.’
‘In’t he a smasher, Nurse?’ Geraldine would often say after his visits. ‘I’ve got meself a real diamond in Mick, that’s for sure.’
I got so used to seeing Geraldine plumped up on a pillow, swathed in a garish purple satin nightgown Mick had bought her at Stockport market, that after just a few weeks it felt as if she’d always been with us. Sometimes she even talked the nurses into letting her help out with the tea trolley, dishing out cuppas to other patients.
‘Does me good to stretch me legs,’ she’d grin as she waddled round the ward shouting out, ‘Two sugars as usual, Mrs Crowe? Best keep your strength up!’
‘Evening, Nurse!’ she’d always bellow when I turned up for a shift. ‘How are you tonight?’
‘It’s me who should be asking you that,’ I’d laugh, marvelling at how much energy Geraldine had in her condition. ‘I’ll be round later, make sure you’re OK.’
When a woman is expecting triplets she is at greater risk of developing high blood pressure, protein in the urine and oedema of the ankles, all of which are complications that can threaten the safety of the mother and baby.
I knew Geraldine wasn’t averse to sneaking to the toilets for a cigarette because I often smelled it on her breath, so I was always very particular about checking her blood pressure, in case smoking affected it.
Mick smuggled in the cigarettes, usually hidden in the paper bag he brought beneath a bottle of Vimto, a copy of Woman’s Weekly and a quarter of pineapple cubes from the corner shop. He tried to be fairly discreet about the cigarettes, but Geraldine didn’t really care if she got caught smoking, and often left empty packets and dog ends on the locker beside her bed.
One night as I sat beside Geraldine for a routine blood pressure check, I asked her how she was feeling being stuck in hospital for so long.
‘Right as rain,’ she chirped. ‘To tell you the truth, you were right. I’m enjoying the rest.’
Lowering her voice and staring down at her wedding ring, she added bashfully: ‘I’m glad I don’t have to face ’im indoors all the time, too.’
‘Whatever do you mean?’ I asked. ‘Mick thinks the world of you, and I thought you said he was a diamond?’
Geraldine leaned her head towards me conspiratorially and fixed her big green eyes on mine. They were glinting with what looked like a mixture of fear and excitement.
‘Can you keep a secret, Nurse?’ she whispered.
Before I had a chance to answer, Geraldine was mouthing the words: ‘They’re not his!’ As she did so she pointed dramatically to her pregnant belly, which was now so huge it looked fit to burst at any moment.
My eyes felt as if they were bulging out of their sockets, but I tried my best to remain calm and composed in the face of such alarming and unexpected news.
