four flavours of midwifery

Lisa Milner-Smith reflects on the sweet, the sour, the bitter, and the salt of caring for new mothers and their babies

For as long as I can remember, I have received joy from the birth of a baby. There’s something sweet about the first breath, be it a cry or just a little sigh of contended arrival. There is a sweetness about the smile on the mother’s face, the eye contact they make when this new little person is greeted for the first time, and the love between the two of them that becomes tangible as she cradles her infant. It is a sweetness that, as midwives, we are privileged to witness over and over again, and for me, it never ‘tastes’ bland. Then, there is the rare opportunity to ‘taste’ an even sweeter event: the birth of a baby to a woman I have grown to love. Whilst it is possible for a food with too much sugar to be too sweet for our palate, to me that birth cannot ever ‘taste’ too sweet!

There are other flavours in the NHS. Like many of us, I work in an environment where bitterness and sourness are regularly voiced. Post-pandemic, people are weary, staff are stretched and less experienced, cases are more complex, and there seem to be fewer role models around to support newly qualified practitioners as they settle in. Whilst government strategies hail a future with greater continuity of care, leading to better experiences and outcomes, the workforce is not always positive about the extra strains they feel this puts them under.

Then I had an experience that made me ‘taste’ things differently.

A woman came in in labour, and I was the person caring for her. I created a warm, safe environment, met all her needs, looked her in the eyes, encouraged and supported her. Then, her named midwife appeared, and ten minutes later, the woman birthed her baby into my colleague’s hands. With joyous rapture, the woman declared to my colleague, ‘I couldn’t have done it without you!’. Well, I discovered something about myself in that moment. I had worked for hours caring for that woman, yet those last ten minutes of care she received from her known midwife erased any awareness that she appeared to have that anyone else was in the room, let alone actually might have helped. I took the notes outside the room to write them up, and made a slightly sarcastic comment, under my breath, with an ironic smile, ‘Yeah, good thing you came back!’. I grinned knowingly at my colleague, who smiled back at me.

As I reflected on the birth, I recognised my own bitterness – the contamination found in the sour comment. But the Lord is gracious. He scattered salt. In the quiet of reflection, I recognised my need for him. I realised that if I were to get on board with the continuity of care agenda, I would have to let go of my need for recognition and my ungodly desire for approval and thanks. The salt of the Spirit was doing its job, drawing out my thirst to become more like Christ. I realised that in the future, I would need to gain satisfaction from being in the place of unrecognised service. As I attend to the needs of those I care for, I pray I will become more like Christ as I fade into the background and facilitate the birth of a baby through the hands of another. The same sweetness of birth can be found there if I quietly die to self, endure my cross, and set this new joy before me.

Lisa Milner-Smith is a Practice Development Midwife working across Scotland