Delivering Hope

I fainted the first time I saw a live delivery. In those days you had to witness five babies being born before you could start delivering yourself. The hospital staff would ring a bell when a woman was about to deliver and you had to drop what you were doing, throw your gown on and scurry to the delivery room. The first time the bell rang I was completely unprepared and overwhelmed by whole thing. I just thought, “I’ll never be able to do this!”

I was shocked by the standard of maternal care I saw in post-Communist Russia. I visited a Russian polyclinic as part of a Government-funded research project and it was like stepping back in time. It was very impersonal and unwelcoming; the midwives didn’t work with the women at all. The delivery rooms had glass doors with beds facing them. After delivering the women were left with their legs up in stirrups so they could drip bleed and the midwives could just walk past the doors and check on them. For me that summed up the Russian approach to midwifery at that time. It was so undignified.

My life changed when I went to Rwanda in 2001. My local church in Formby is linked to a village called Shyira and I went to visit their maternity hospital. I was completely unprepared for what I saw. There were five nurses, only one of whom was trained, and no midwives. There was no running water or electricity and it was filthy. The delivery room had a big hole in the window so everyone congregated outside and looked in during deliveries. The ward also was mixed so mothers who had just given birth were with women who had miscarried or had malaria or TB. I was absolutely paralysed with shock.

I helped build a maternity hospital. When I got home from Rwanda I was like a woman possessed. Through the church and local community we raised £24,000 to build a new hospital and it has made such a difference to the people of Shyira. In Rwanda a normal birth costs £3 and a Caesarian is £30; the average wage is £3 per week. I set up a charity called Safe Delivery to subsidise the cost of birth and this, coupled with the new facilities, has greatly reduced maternal and infant mortality in Shyira. I’m now looking at rolling this model out to other villages in Rwanda.

I can’t look at shoes anymore. When I see an expensive pair of shoes, I just think £110 could sponsor a child in Rwanda through secondary education for a year. I get very irritated by materialism. People have to have everything now, and think they have a right to it. In Shyira children have meat twice a term if they’re lucky. They eat what’s been grown there and if it hasn’t grown they don’t eat. So I don’t get stressed in the supermarket anymore if I can’t get exactly what I want.

I’m no good at shouting about my achievements. I was one of 200 women invited to the Woman of the Year Lunch last year and I was very humbled to be in the company of such outstanding women. I was just as pleased to be named Woman of the Year for my work overseas by the women’s organisation Crosby International Seroptimists. I don’t really like the attention but it’s nice to be recognised for what you do.

Midwifery has become too political. There is shortage of 5,000 midwives nationally due to lack of funding and this is leading to a generation of stressed, tired, short-tempered, burnt out midwives. Huge maternity units, where mothers don’t see the same person twice, and the constraints of the medical hierarchy don’t help. It’s no wonder morale is low in the profession. If I could wave a magic wand women would see one midwife antenatally, during delivery and postnatally, and it should be made easier for them to give birth at home. I believe this type of care makes for better births

I still get emotional at births. Even now after so many deliveries I still well up at the sight of a newborn baby. Every birth is so special, it’s just such a privilege to be a part of that amazing experience.