The Midwife's Here!: The Enchanting True Story of One of Britain's Longest Serving Midwives (20 page)

On one occasion I was shocked to hear my mentor ask a new young father, ‘Have you got enough to eat?’ Ashton and its surrounding area were neither deprived nor wealthy. Men
tended to do blue-collar jobs, typically working as tradesmen, bus drivers or for companies like the local electricity board, Norweb. I had never heard of anyone going hungry, but Mrs Tattersall knew the young man had lost his job recently and money was tight.

‘We’re getting by,’ came the dignified reply.

The next time we passed the house Mrs Tattersall had loaded the car with goodies, which she delivered to this man’s grateful wife, completely without ceremony.

‘Here, one of my colleagues was baking last night and she gave me these buns and a milk pudding. I won’t use them – will you?’

The woman beamed appreciatively as we drove quickly away. It was classic Mrs Tattersall.

Nothing seemed to faze her, and I felt able to ask her most questions that popped into my head, without feeling embarrassed.

‘What’s “payment in kind”?’ I asked one day. I had heard two midwives discussing a patient who had given birth at the hospital a few days earlier. I gathered that the married young woman had decided to have her baby adopted because of this ‘payment in kind’ problem, and I didn’t understand it.

‘Linda, love, I know the girl you’re talking about. It’s like this. She slept with her landlord because she and her husband couldn’t afford to pay the rent. It was either that or be thrown out on the streets. Sadly, the young woman fell pregnant, with the landlord being the father of the baby.’

I was horrified. I’d been shocked by the stories of the prostitutes I’d heard at St Mary’s but I was absolutely stunned that such a sordid arrangement could take place right here on my own doorstep.

‘So that’s why she is having the baby adopted,’ I gasped, the penny slowly dropping. I knew that babies who were being put up for adoption were removed from their mothers as swiftly as possible after the birth. The poor women weren’t allowed to hold their babies, even for a minute. This was the kindest way, it was thought, as it stopped the mother becoming attached to her child, and would help her cope with the separation.

‘What will happen to that girl now?’ I asked.

‘Her husband is letting her stay, I believe. He said she could stay but the baby had to go, so I hear.’

That was the end of the conversation. Mrs Tattersall always gave straight answers, but she wasn’t one to gossip. I liked that. I was learning so much from her, things you couldn’t possibly have learned from a midwifery textbook.

Despite being exposed to some of life’s tough realities, I was in my element. I aspired to be as good and experienced a midwife as Mrs Tattersall, and I watched and listened eagerly each and every day, lapping up everything she said and did, and feeling privileged to be her pupil.

One night in September 1970, when I was in the third month of Part Two of my training, Mrs Tattersall and I were brewing a pot of tea in the nurses’ kitchen when we were called out to a delivery.

‘Bloody hell, why do these women always leave it till an ungodly hour to go into labour?’ Mrs Tattersall rasped. ‘And will you look at the night!’

I looked out of the rain-splattered window as Mrs Tattersall stubbed out her cigarette in the sink. It sizzled when it made contact with dregs of cold tea, no doubt discarded by the last midwives to have their break interrupted.

It certainly was a filthy night outside. Mrs Tattersall and I had not long returned from checking up on another expectant mother, and the weather had closed in. The sky was as black as the ace of spades and thick curtains of drizzle were clearly visible beneath the streetlights.

‘Want a lift or will you take the scooter?’

‘I’ll take the scooter. I’ll see you there,’ I smiled, thinking of the lipstick-stained fag ends that littered the floor of Mrs Tattersall’s Avenger and deciding that despite the rain I’d rather ride my moped. With its small 50cc engine it was officially a moped, not a scooter, though I would never have corrected Mrs Tattersall.

I pulled on my blue NHS-issue raincoat to protect my uniform from the rain, took out my bun, which was held in place by a little blue velvet ribbon over a rubber band, and headed out into the night.

As I pulled on my crash helmet I ran through a mental checklist. Mrs Tattersall had visited Mrs Willis last week, two weeks before the baby’s due date, to deposit vital equipment. There would be two sets of Spencer Wells forceps, the same as ones we used in the hospital, a pair of scissors and a roll of cotton wool already waiting for us.

Tonight, Mrs Tattersall would bring a kidney-shaped receiver dish in which to collect the placenta, scales to weigh the baby, a Pinard stethoscope to monitor the heartbeat and a sphygmomanometer to test the mother’s blood pressure. All I needed were my notes and, most importantly, a Jacob’s Tea Cake to stop me fainting with hunger. I’d learned by now that expectant dads are absolutely brilliant at making cups of tea, but they never, ever offered us midwives anything to eat.

I checked my coat pocket for both the notebook and the biscuit and set off into the darkness with Mrs Tattersall’s directions ringing in my head.

‘Straight over at the junction, keep left until you pass the bus shelter and keep your eyes peeled for Willshaw Lane, for goodness sake. It’s easily missed in this bloody rain!’

I must remember to put the Tea Cake discreetly in my uniform pocket before I enter the house, I thought, then I could eat it when I nip to the bathroom later.

‘Must think we run on thin air!’ Mrs Tattersall frequently complained, though I never saw her eat a thing as she seemed to prefer a cigarette to a snack.

As my trusty moped slowly but surely carried me to Willshaw Lane I ran another mental checklist through my head, this time taking stock of my own life.

I was in the final stage of my midwifery training. I had three hard years of nurses’ training behind me and had passed Part One of my ten-month-long midwifery course with flying colours. Now, at the tender age of twenty-two, I was out in the community, well on my way to completing Part Two, which would make me a qualified midwife at last. I could feel my confidence growing daily, and I felt lucky to be learning from a professional like Mrs Tattersall.

I felt a rush of excitement, even though the rain was now spiking my cheeks like cold needles. This part of the job was exhilarating. I felt important, riding through the night to the aid of a pregnant woman. I wasn’t afraid, as I didn’t yet have the responsibility of delivering a baby all by myself, but I was
that
close, and was finally starting to feel like a proper little midwife.

I was glad to see that Mrs Tattersall had beaten me to the semi-detached house, but nevertheless when the expectant father answered my knock at the door he gave me a broad, relieved smile. It was a look I was beginning to know well, and I liked it.

‘The midwife’s here!’ he almost sang as he welcomed me in. When his wife is in labour, it was becoming apparent, there are no more comforting words a man can utter.

Mrs Willis was labouring on a bed that had been brought down to the lounge so as not to disturb her two young sons who were sleeping upstairs. It was 11.30 p.m. and she’d been in slow labour for a few hours already, but was clearly coping very well.

‘Thanks for coming,’ she smiled as she fished in her handbag for a Spangle sweet to suck on. ‘I feel better now you’re both here.’

From past experience I knew Mrs Tattersall would not have made a song and dance about the fact I was still a student, as that might alarm the patient. I would simply have been introduced as ‘Nurse Linda Buckley’, possibly with the words ‘my colleague’ tagged on the end, which gave me a flush of pride.

I surveyed the room. A brown-and-cream striped settee and armchair had been pushed back against the far wall to make way for the bed, which was covered in a very fashionable spiral-patterned quilt. I’d seen a similar one on display in the window of Marshall & Snelgrove in the centre of Manchester recently, so I knew it was all the rage and had probably cost a pretty penny. I was concerned the quilt would get ruined.

‘Don’t worry, Derek has seen to it that we have plenty of towels,’ Mrs Willis said, noticing me looking at her bed linen. ‘And there’s a towel and a piece of soap laid out for you in the bathroom, Nurse.’

I felt very important, being welcomed into the Willis’s home on such a momentous day in their lives. Two bars of an electric fire glowed orange in the hearth, which was surrounded by an elaborate brick fireplace covering an entire wall of the sitting room. On the mantelpiece were displayed several souvenir plates from holidays in Prestatyn and Rhyl, depicting painted scenes of caravan parks and donkeys on the beach.

‘Linda, please see to it that the instruments are sterilised,’ Mrs Tattersall instructed. ‘Mr Willis will provide you with a pan.’

I followed Mr Willis into the kitchen, where a large stainless-steel pressure-cooker pan was standing on the Formica worktop.

‘I hope it’s big enough; it’s the biggest we have,’ he apologised.

‘It’s perfect,’ I assured him, and indeed it was.

I remembered Mrs Tattersall’s words of wisdom as I shifted the pan onto the hob and struck a match to light the gas.

‘Sterility is not the be all and end all,’ she had told me. ‘Remember, the instruments have already been cleaned at the hospital. It is our job to make sure they are “socially clean”. By that I mean they are as clean as we can possibly get them in the circumstances. At the end of the day, any germs that are knocking about are the mother’s own germs, because we are in her house. Just do your best.’

Mrs Tattersall examined Mrs Willis while I boiled up the forceps and scissors. Mr Willis busied himself in the kitchen, too, as it wasn’t the done thing for men to get in the way during an examination.

‘We could have hours yet, but you’re doing well,’ I heard Mrs Tattersall wheeze.

Mr Willis made us all a cup of tea and we settled around the bed, chatting softly and pausing to offer words of comfort and encouragement whenever a contraction made Mrs Willis wince.

Mrs Tattersall made a note of the time, followed by the scribbled observation ‘five centimetres dilated’, which she let me see but did not discuss with Mrs Willis. In those days women rarely asked questions and didn’t expect to be given medical details; they simply put their faith in their midwife and did as they were told. It was almost unprecedented for a
woman to have read a book about pregnancy, and I had even heard midwives telling patients not to bother looking at what scant leaflets there were at the antenatal clinic, remarking that it might not do them any good to ‘know too much’.

Mrs Tattersall put down her brief notes and began circling letters in a word search puzzle in her
People’s Friend
magazine.

‘I’d play a record but I’m afraid of waking the little ’uns upstairs,’ Mr Willis said earnestly.

‘My wife likes The Beatles. Do you?’

‘Oh yes, I do,’ I smiled. ‘John Lennon is my idol, he’s
my
Beatle. I saw them live at the Apollo in Ardwick in 1965.’

‘Never! You lucky duck!’ exclaimed Mrs Willis, with such vigour she brought on her biggest contraction yet.

‘Tell me all about it,’ she panted, clutching her stomach and wrinkling her brow until the pain subsided.

‘Well, I nagged my dad to give me a lift up to the Apollo at 5.30 a.m. on the day the tickets went on sale,’ I said. ‘I remember I took a hard-boiled egg in my pocket in case I got hungry, but I was too excited to think about eating it. I felt like I’d won the Pools when I got my hands on that little yellow ticket. It cost me 15 shillings, and was the best thing I had ever bought in my life! My school friend Susan Thornley was with me, and we hugged each other and jumped up and down, we were so thrilled.’

Mrs Willis took a sharp intake of breath. ‘Hold my hand, Derek, this is a big one coming,’ she gasped.

‘Go on, Nurse, keep talking, please tell me moooore,’ she implored, the word morphing into the sound of a mooing cow.

I glanced at Mrs Tattersall, who gave me an encouraging nod.

‘I can’t remember much about the music,’ I went on. ‘I don’t think I heard a thing. I just screamed and screamed, because that’s what everyone else did …’

Bang on cue Mrs Willis let out an ear-piercing shriek.

‘Oooh heck, that was a big one,’ she puffed. ‘Sorry about that.’

‘We don’t mind the noise, but make sure you don’t hurt your throat,’ I smiled. ‘I don’t want you ending up like me after that concert. My throat was so swollen from all the screaming I couldn’t talk for days afterwards!’

And so the night went on, and on.

We chatted in a friendly but polite way, drank lots of tea and watched and listened as Mrs Willis, who eventually asked me to call her Brenda, huffed and occasionally screamed through her slow and steady labour.

At 7.30 a.m. Mrs Tattersall wrote up some notes, stood up suddenly and announced, ‘I’m going out to find a telephone.’

I followed her to the door anxiously as she pulled on her coat.

‘We’re never going to make the 8.30 a.m. clinic at this rate,’ she complained, rolling her eyes to the ceiling.

Seeing my own eyes widen to the size of dinner plates, she added, ‘You’ll be absolutely fine, Linda. I won’t be long. I expect she’s got a way to go yet.’

Mr and Mrs Willis didn’t seem the slightest bit perturbed by Mrs Tattersall’s departure, but I was too busy fretting about being left alone and in charge to feel flattered by their reaction.

‘There’s a phone box down Wood Lane I used to call you from last night,’ Mr Willis instructed helpfully as he saw her out. ‘I’ll put another brew on when you get back.’

I pulled up a brown leather pouffe to the side of the bed and patted Mrs Willis’s hand. ‘It’s been a long night. How are you feeling?’ I asked.

‘I think I want to push,’ came the unexpected reply.

My pulse quickened but I didn’t flinch as I hastily adjusted her nightgown and bedclothes and prepared to examine her.

‘Oh, right you are. Deep breaths. Remember what we’ve taught you. Take your time …’

‘The baby’s coming!’ she panted. ‘It’s coming right now!’

‘I’m right here. You’re doing fine, Mrs Willis,’ I said, ignoring the static shock that crackled up the back of my stocking as I knelt on the thick nylon rug at the end of the bed. Mr Willis hurried out of the room in the direction of the kitchen.

‘I can see the baby’s head,’ I said, surprised at how calm my voice sounded. ‘You’re doing magnificently, Brenda. One more push should do it … go on now!’

I saw the baby give a little turn as it plopped out perfectly onto the chocolate-brown towels Mr Willis had laid beneath his wife.

‘Well done!’ I exclaimed, as much to myself as to Mrs Willis. ‘It’s a girl, a beautiful little girl!’ I picked her up and she let out a mighty cry.

Mr Willis crept gingerly into the room and kissed his wife on her flushed red cheeks, while I cut the umbilical cord and watched the proud parents breathe a delighted sigh of relief.

The baby looked completely adorable and I was thrilled at the sight of her too, but I couldn’t allow myself to relax and celebrate until the placenta was delivered. Only then could I be sure that Mrs Willis wouldn’t haemorrhage, and my job would be done.

Without delay, I injected Mrs Willis with Syntometrine. I’d already prepared it, thinking at the time that it might be my only hands-on role in the birth, with Mrs Tattersall in charge. As I gave the injection in her thigh I explained to Mrs Willis with as much authority as I could muster that it was to help her expel the placenta. I made myself smile brightly at her, wanting to reassure her that I was completely in control of the situation, even though I was thinking to myself, ‘Stay calm. This is still not over. I’m not in the hospital now; I’m in an ordinary house. I have no oxygen on the wall, no buzzer to press if things go wrong.’

Thankfully, Mrs Willis delivered the placenta with impressive ease and was so preoccupied with gazing at her new daughter I don’t think she’d have picked up on my underlying anxiety even if I’d been dripping with sweat and shaking from head to foot with nerves. I proceeded to clean the little girl and weigh her before putting on a terry towelling nappy and white cotton nightdress and laying her in the waiting crib beside her mother. I did this swiftly and efficiently, wanting to finish the job professionally, and I felt a fabulous warm glow spreading around my body. ‘I did it!’ I thought to myself, an involuntary, genuine grin spreading across my face. ‘
I’ve
done this!’

I will never forget the overwhelming feelings of relief and sheer, unbridled delight I experienced in that front room. The baby’s warm skin and soft downy head, the tiny bubbles of saliva that popped daintily on her lips as she let out her first cry, and the minute, shell-like fingernails on the tips of her wriggling fingers all captivated me. I’d brought a new life into the world! I was sure I couldn’t have felt happier if I were Mrs Willis herself, and she was indeed a picture of pure joy and triumph.