The Midwife’s Here!: The Enchanting True Story of One of Britain’s Longest Serving Midwives
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.
Читать The Midwife’s Here!: The Enchanting True Story of One of Britain’s Longest Serving Midwives онлайн беплатно
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
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
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.
