Midwifery mania

Midwifery is having its ‘moment’ in the media recently. It seems every newspaper I open and TV channel I turn to is portraying the profession in some way. And I am hooked.

Most notably, BBC1 Sunday evening drama Call the Midwife has become an instant hit. The series, based on Jennifer Worth’s memoirs about life as a midwife in London’s East End in the late 1950s, has touched a nerve with viewers, so much so that the BBC has commissioned a second series after it pulled in over eight million viewers for its first episode – beating top TV shows such as Sherlock and ITV's Dancing on Ice.

Fast forward 60 years (and three TV days) to the third series of Channel 4’s One Born Every Minute – compulsive Wednesday night viewing. The fly-on-the-wall documentary follows life on a bustling maternity unit at Leeds General Infirmary.

I have been left wondering. Was midwifery harder in the 50s than it is now? RCM chief executive Cathy Warwick summed up this question by stating simply that midwifery had ‘changed… not necessarily for the better but on the other hand we cannot deny that we usually work in a better environment with better equipment.’

It’s true that these days we have caesarean sections that were almost unheard of on the NHS before the 50s. In one episode of Call the Midwife a disabled mother had lost numerous babies at birth as a caesarean hadn’t be available to her then, a far cry from the world of elective caesareans we see today. The contrast in the two programmes proves just how medicalised birth is in the 21st century. Gone are the routine home births of the 1950s, here are modern birth suites, waterbirths, ultrasounds and fetal monitors.

Call the Midwife paints a picture of a woman giving birth at home, father-to-be waiting patiently outside (fathers were typically banned from the delivery), a natural delivery, with no pain relief.  One Born Every Minute depicts a hospital setting, room filled with equipment, options of pain relief and partners there to hold the mother’s hand. Are these changes for the better? There is no denying the infant and maternal mortality rate has decreased since the 50s.

However different midwifery in the two eras seems, what remains consistent is the excellent work that midwives do. Their dedication, commitment, care and hard work are apparent. My only hope is that by raising the midwifery profile, the plight of today’s midwives will be sufficiently highlighted and the government will be encouraged to carry out more pertinent number crunching – crunching to increase midwife numbers.