The Midwife’s Here!: The Enchanting True Story of One of Britain’s Longest Serving Midwives. Linda Fairley
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in to deliver the second baby. He told us it was intent on coming out bottom-first, which wasn’t what we’d wanted. Of course, having no scanning equipment in those days and only using our hands to palpate the abdomen and feel the position of the babies, it had been very difficult to gauge accurately how the triplets were lying.
I glanced at my colleague Jill, who had been meant to deliver baby number two. She looked disappointed, but we all knew that a doctor had to deal with a breech birth in these circumstances. Midwives are there to deliver babies under normal conditions, and this was a complication in an already unusual pregnancy.
Somewhere amid Geraldine’s now blood-curdling screams and the hushed but firm instructions being issued by Dr Cooper, I heard the words: ‘Well done. It’s a boy!’
By now baby number three was obviously in a hurry to meet its siblings. ‘Cephalic’ I heard almost immediately, and breathed a sigh of relief. That meant this one was head first, thank goodness. ‘And another girl! Congratulations, Mrs Drew!’
I looked at Geraldine’s exhausted face and her eyes met mine. Often during a delivery the mother will seek out one individual for reassurance. Nowadays it is usually the husband, but with Mick still pacing the corridor outside, as expectant dads did back then, Geraldine looked to me in this room full of people.
‘Well done,’ I whispered. ‘You’ve done it!’
It was only then she allowed a smile to stretch across her face. Despite her brave banter, she had been as apprehensive as the rest of us about this tricky delivery. So much might have gone wrong. Three babies meant three times the potential problems – and some.
‘Are they all OK?’ Geraldine puffed as I helped clean the babies up and arrange them in three cots around her bed.
‘They sound it!’ I laughed as the trio struck up a hearty chorus. They were captivating, they really were. Each one was perfect and pink and utterly gorgeous. ‘And I can count thirty fingers and thirty toes,’ I added, looking adoringly at each one in turn. ‘They are wonderful! Shall I get Mick?’
‘Yes please,’ she nodded proudly.
I have never seen a man look as delighted and besotted as Mick did that day.
‘Well, what d’ya reckon?’ Geraldine asked as he stepped into the room, his dancing eyes not knowing which cot to peer into first.
‘I’m as chuffed as mint balls!’ he said, smothering Geraldine with kisses before going up to each cot in turn and cooing over his babies. ‘Chuffed as mint balls!’
It was wonderful to witness a show of such pure, unadulterated joy and love. My heart went out to the Drews. They were now responsible for six children under the age of seven. Geraldine had already told me that Mick’s wage only just supported them as a family of five, let alone eight. Now they would somehow have to find room for three more little mites in their small semi-detached house. With Geraldine not able to drive and certainly not able to afford a vehicle big enough for her family even if she wanted to, she would have to go everywhere on foot. She would be practically housebound, I realised, with a sudden pang of worry. How would they manage?
Looking at the Drews, who were now holding hands tenderly and gazing at their triplets through dewy eyes, you would never have guessed their world was anything less than perfect. The babies had been delivered safely and each one looked a picture of health. To them, nothing else mattered in that moment, and I was absolutely thrilled for them.
Geraldine and her babies spent ten more days with us. We placed three cots around her bed on the postnatal ward, and at night all three babies were taken to the nursery, where I would often feed one with a bottle while rocking the other two in their cots using my feet.
I felt sad when I finally said goodbye to Geraldine. Despite her smoking and cursing and despite what she had done behind her husband’s back, she was a very nice woman who had a heart of gold, and I knew I would miss her. I still felt uneasy about the deceit, of course. I desperately wanted things to work out for the Drew family and I couldn’t help worrying about what might happen if Mick ever discovered his wife’s guilty secret.
‘Daddy, baby Michael looks the spit of you!’ one of the young Drew boys had exclaimed during an evening visit. ‘Look at his big ears! He has your nose too!’
‘What do you think, Nurse?’ Mick said, directing a piercing gaze at me, which he held for longer than was comfortable.
‘Don’t ask me!’ I laughed, sounding rather too jolly and wishing myself far away. ‘All I know is you’re a very lucky man, Mr Drew,’ I added hastily as I busied myself writing up notes.
‘I know, and my wife’s a lucky girl,’ he said, giving me one of his twinkling winks and smiling a wide, knowing smile. ‘A very lucky girl indeed.’
He was a card all right, just like Geraldine. They made a good pair and I hoped they made it, I really did.
It wasn’t until I was heading home after my shift that something dawned on me. Maybe Mick was trying to tell me something that night? I wondered if he knew the truth all along, or at least suspected it, yet he loved his wife so much he wasn’t going to let it spoil a thing? He was a proud and staunch family man, perhaps so much so he was prepared to keep his wife’s secret and raise another man’s children. It was possible the only thing he wasn’t comfortable with was allowing the midwife to think she knew more than he did himself about his personal life.
‘A couple of cards all right,’ I chuckled to myself when the pieces of the puzzle fell into place in my mind. ‘Good luck to them.’
Preface
To this day, the story of Geraldine Drew and the birth of her triplets remains one of my all-time favourites. It encapsulates the role of a midwife as a professional assistant and confidante, whose ultimate aim is to help women deliver babies safely into the world, whatever the circumstances.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a midwife as ‘a nurse (typically a woman) who is trained to assist women in childbirth’. Over the decades, I have learned that there are many, many different ways a midwife can assist a woman in childbirth and, believe you me, plenty of them are not listed in midwifery textbooks!
When I started my nursing training in 1966 at the Manchester Royal Infirmary (MRI) I had no idea what I was letting myself in for, or even that I would become a midwife. I have since delivered more than 2,200 babies and I still tingle with excitement at every birth. Just feeling the warmth of a newborn’s head in your hands, that new life, there’s honestly nothing like it.
In 2010 I celebrated forty years as a qualified midwife, becoming Britain’s longest-serving midwife at the same hospital. Today, I marvel at how much, yet also how very little, has altered over the years. I’ve witnessed countless changes in the NHS and in midwifery practices, from the demise of the old Nightingale wards to incredible breakthroughs in pregnancy drugs and IVF. I’ve seen fashions for routine enemas, bottle-feeding and home births come and go, and I’ve watched the reluctant shuffle of dads into antenatal classes and delivery suites turn into a stampede.
There have been nine changes of government during my career, so I’m told, but I have never let politics get in the way of delivering babies. I have been very happy sailing along in the great old liner that is the NHS, quietly navigating sea changes in bureaucracy, funding, practices and guidelines. I’ve never aspired to rise up the ranks and become a manager. Delivering babies and striving to make every pregnant woman feel like the most important pregnant woman in the world is what I do best.
Last year I had the honour of being my daughter’s midwife during her pregnancy, and I am now a very proud grandmother. Baby Joel was born prematurely in July 2011 as I was working on this book and also mourning the death of my third husband, Peter.
So much has happened over the years that I could not fit my memoirs into one volume, and this book concentrates on the early years of my career in the late Sixties and early Seventies. That means the story of Joel’s nerve-racking birth, along with so many others, will have to wait.