NHS midwife on life on the frontline, from wading through puddles of blood to fixing complicated tears and delivering babies in the car park
NO sleep for 20 hours, no food for ten and not even time to go to loo… welcome to the the life of a midwife.
Leah Hazard, 41, is a serving NHS midwife in Scotland, a role she’s done for the last six years.
During that time, she’s delivered hundreds of babies and cared for thousands of women, all the while working within a health service where resources are being brutally cut.
After a particularly challenging shift which saw Leah walk out of the hospital, the mum-of-two decided that she was going to put pen to paper and write about her experiences.
Hard Pushed is an honest, moving and rage-inducing read about the realities of working for the NHS under a system that is almost broken beyond repair.
Leah spoke to Natasha Harding about life on the NHS frontline.
Leah says: “The day I left my post began like all the others. I arrived for my shift in Triage that evening, all of the beds in the treatment room were occupied, and there were another eight women in the waiting area.
“Once the handover was complete, I began to work. The next few hours flew by in a blur of screaming faces and splashes of blood. I worked like a demon, but the harder I hustled, the less I seemed to accomplish.
“Doctors were nowhere to be seen, a shortage of staff and beds ensured the labour ward was impenetrable to all but the very sickest patients, women keep streaming through the doors of Triage, and the phones kept ringing.
The hours flew by in a blur of screaming faces and splashes of blood
Leah Hazard
“The staffing, the lack of beds – it had all been written in the stars long ago in an office by some middle manager tasked with minding the government’s meagre purse.
“That night was just one night too much – I had nothing more to give.”
It’s not unheard of for a midwife to leave and not come back, one of Leah’s colleagues had recently turned her back on the job she loved – and many more besides are on medication for anxiety or depression as the pressure of the job takes its toll.
Leah, who’s married to Alan, 46, left a career in television after the birth of her first daughter in 2003 and began working as a doula where she supported women in pregnancy and during labour.
The birth of Leah’s second daughter in 2006 prompted Leah to make the leap into midwifery where she imagined that she’d spend her days nurturing women during childbirth and offering advice to new mums.
Since qualifying, she has worked in a variety of clinical areas within the NHS maternity services, including antenatal clinics, triage units and labour wards. She’s since learnt that her idealisms are very, very different to the harsh reality of working in a busy hospital.
The realisation of how much a midwife does during any given shift dawned on a first-time father whose wife Leah looked after recently.
Leah explains: “Steven and Michelle arrived in triage with all the nervous enthusiasm of new parents-to-be and Michelle’s labour progressed quickly so I phoned to tell the labour ward sister that Michelle needed to be admitted.
“However, I was told the unit was short-staffed, and if I brought Michelle up, I would need to stay and help her deliver her baby myself. Although this meant that I would be leaving my own department short-staffed, I had little choice.
“As it happened, labour took much longer than I had anticipated.
With the current level of cuts I feel if we don’t let the world know how underfunded and overburdened we are, we will never make the health service a place
Leah Hazard
“After a heroic amount of pushing, a technically small but no less terrifying haemorrhage and a complicated tear that required some tricky suturing, Michelle was wrapped up in clean blankets with her beautiful baby girl.
“I busied myself tidying while they settled into their first breastfeed.
“As I worked my way across the room, stuffing bloodied drapes into bin bags, tossing absorbent pads onto puddles of bloody liquor, and collecting instruments that had been flung to the floor in the final moments of delivery, I became aware that Steven was watching me.
“Sorry for staring,” he said, “I just can’t believe everything that you’ve done for us today. You met us in triage, then you came here and looked after Michelle all afternoon and then you delivered our baby. Then you scrubbed up and did Michelle’s stitches and now you’re cleaning. I keep thinking, where’s the cavalry? I guess I thought there would be lots of other people in the room, or along the way, but it’s just you. You’re the cavalry.”
“Yup,” I said, as I lifted a bale of bloody sheets from the floor. “I’m it.”
Leah currently works in Scotland and says that short-staffing and overcrowding are more common than the public might think.
Every single shift brings its own struggles leaving Leah exhausted and frequently writing her resignation in her head.
After taking time away from her job, Leah decided that she was going to put pen to paper and write about her experiences.
She says: “From the earliest days of my practice, I imagined that I might write some of the stories down after my retirement, when hindsight may have softened some of the harder edges of my experiences, and the threat of professional backlash might have become somewhat moot.
“However, with the current level of cuts I feel if we don’t let the world know how underfunded and overburdened we are, we will never make the health service a place where the next generation of midwives can practise safely with dignity and pride.
I worked my way across the room, stuffing bloodied drapes into bin bags, tossing absorbent pads onto puddles of bloody liquor, and collecting instruments that had been flung to the floor
Leah Hazard
“I reduced my working week to three 12 hour shifts which gave me the chance to start writing.”
“I went back to my role because of a sense of duty to my colleagues and the women I care for. But also because being a midwife is my livelihood and I have a family who depend on my wage.”
“The reaction to Leah’s book has been overwhelmingly positive. She says: “Midwives can be a scary bunch, we’re passionate and opinionated. However, everyone I’ve spoken to believes that we deserve a platform and voice.”
The book was borne out of frustration. Frustration that most midwives want to be able to do their job better – to give more to the women in their care, rather than just the basics.
Leah continues: “Writing this book is a risk for me, personally and professionally. However, I want to give my best to my job and I can’t.
“I love my role and the endless variety that every shift brings. However, I don’t love the system that I’m working in.
“There is a lack of respect for midwifery in society and it’s become the ugly stepsister to the NHS. People admire the work of doctors and nurses are looked upon as angelic, but because midwifery is undervalued it doesn’t get the resources.
Leah says: “I often describe Triage as ‘Accident & Emergency for pregnant people’. However, unlike an A&E nurse, whose patients have already been filtered by a far-off call handler, the Triage midwife has the joy of fielding all of the panicked phone calls as well as the face-to-face emergencies. A single shift in Triage, or even just an hour on the phones can take a midwife from the ridiculous to the sublime and back again. As a wise midwife once said, it’s no wonder we drink.”
Musing on the most memorable birth, Leah says: “Possibly the birth that took place in the car park, in the front seat of a Transit van. It was early in the day and things were quite calm for a change when the front-desk clerkess rushed into Triage to tell us that someone was delivering outside the hospital!
“A colleague and I just had time to grab some gloves on the way out of the department, and when we arrived in the car park, we could see a woman in advanced labour in the front seat of a van, with her husband sitting in an understandable state of shock by her side.
When we arrived in the car park, we could see a woman in advanced labour in the front seat of a van
Leah Hazard
“It was clear that things were progressing quickly and fortunately, the baby was born screaming and in good condition within minutes. We managed to get mother and baby (still attached by the umbilical cord) into a wheelchair, wrapped up warmly and along to labour ward….and that was before breakfast! In these kinds of quick births, midwives are little more than spectators, but it’s always wonderful to celebrate a safe arrival.”
Over the years, Leah has looked after women who have tragically lost babies.
She says: “Student midwives are drip-fed death by their mentors. There is no good way to learn that babies sometimes die, and that mothers sometimes leave the hospital empty-handed, and there is no right way to teach or learn these lessons.
“When the worst happens you should be moved – and if you’re not, it’s time to leave. To lose a baby is truly horrific.”
Despite the hard days – and nights, the job is full of rewarding moments.
Leah explains: “There are times when you know unequivocally that you’ve saved a life – by identifying early signs of acute illness like pre eclampsia or sepsis, or by raising concerns about a baby’s heart trace – it’s those precious times that makes everything we go through worthwhile.”
She continues: “Being a midwife is a privilege. To be with a woman when she brings a new life into the world is an intense, powerful experience. A healthy birth is always a cause for celebration. Even after the worst of shifts, I know I’ve made a difference and I hang onto that.”
“However, it’s getting harder. Not enough money has been invested in the service and that lack of long-term funding has got to crisis point.
“As well as more money to improve staffing levels and bed numbers, we need to change our perception of what a midwife does and acknowledge that it’s a skilled and important job.
“Midwives are an ageing population and there isn’t enough young midwives qualifying – and that won’t change until the role becomes more attractive.
“Ultimately it’s the women in our care and their newborn babies who are adversely affected. It means that we won’t have time to offer those extra words of comfort, or spend enough time with a woman who’s struggling to breastfeed. Mistakes are more likely to be made by not having the time to rest properly – and eat occasionally.
And even though being a midwife has taken its toll on Leah at times, she says that she’d do it all again. She explains: “I wouldn’t leave unless I was pushed.
“I don’t regret becoming a midwife, I found my vocation and that’s not something many people can say. If it ended tomorrow I’d know I had six years of doing a job that makes a difference. However, it’s been much more emotionally challenging than I ever thought possible.”
Leah Hazard is the author of Hard Pushed: A Midwife’s story, published by Hutchinson, £16.99
MOST READ IN FABULOUS
For more birth stories, heavily-pregnant Meghan Markle is under “increased care” now because she’s a “geriatric” mum, a midwife has claimed.
Plus this new mum blasted her husband after he told doctors to “stitch her up tight” just hours after giving birth.
And this is the incredible moment a midwife brought her OWN baby into the world via a C-section.