Michelle Tant

(October 2016) When you complete your midwifery training you might be under the illusion that you can purchase a smaller bag for work. That is all it is, an illusion. On starting your brand new job you will be presented with your ‘Band 5 Book’. And it looks remarkably like your student PAD but without the page of signatures. In the UK a vast majority (I would hope all?) of newly qualified midwives benefit from a preceptorship program of some sort to help them gain extra skills and experience. Generally speaking this will include skills such as perineal suturing and cannulation, additional skills to help you to provide continuity of care for the women you look after. So on handing in my precious ‘book’, I am now a Band 6 midwife and I thought it might be a good point in time to reflect. Achieving the skills required to for Band 6 has at times felt very task oriented, having to do something a certain amount of times to be considered competent (and m...

 (January 2016) It take three years of fulltime study, combining theory with practice, (and a whole heap of blood, sweat and tears)  to become a qualified and registered midwife. The question I have repeatedly asked myself, since donning my navy blue ‘Midwife’ polo shirt for the first time, is whether those three years adequately prepare you for the emotional and physical onslaught that being a newly qualified midwife is. Two months in and my answer to this is yes and no. My “yes” has me visiting some basic truths – I qualified as a midwife and as such I feel able to competently support a woman through her pregnancy, birth and postnatal period. I know what is normal and I know who to speak to when it becomes… not normal. I know I am not alone and that senior midwives come out of the woodwork when I ask for help. I know these things in my head… and occasionally in my heart. In my heart I love midwifery and this is what keeps me pressing through my “no”. My “no” is...