Happy International Day of the Midwife to all the midwives, and the wonderful team of people that helped you birth your babies! Where would we be without our midwives?
When I think about my beautiful midwife, it still brings tears to my eyes 16 years on. She was our calm presence, my rock and my greatest advocate.
After 5 days of pre-labour and 36 hours established labour I found myself at 2cm – confused and ready to give up. It was the only time that my midwife took charge and spoke to me directly and strongly: “Nadine you have worked too hard for this. We are going to go into hospital, you are going to have an epidural and you are going to push this baby out!”
And that is exactly what I did. And I am so glad. I know things would have turned out so differently if we hadn’t had Hilary there at our side.
I know that employing our own midwife (even so late at 35 weeks) was the best decision we ever made. We loved her so much that we even named Leroy after her. She represented so much wisdom and compassion that the letters from her name had to be in our little boys’, along with my mummy’s too.
Women of grace, wisdom, compassion and resilience, both selfless and benevolent. These are the qualities we need in our birthing rooms. This is the basis of good birthing care that every woman deserves. They help us feel safe, they help us trust birth and they help us let go so we can make every birth beautiful.
The French term for midwife is sage femme, which means, wise woman. So, let’s celebrate and thank our midwives today.
Vive la sage-femme! Long live the wise woman, the midwife!
Love and gratitude,
Nadine xxx
P.S. Keep an eye out for next week’s e-newsletter. We have a special giveaway to celebrate Mother’s Day!
Photo credit: Kath Mclean, Bright Photography