A few weeks ago I visited a very very ancient tree in Sussex to offer my gratitude and receive some extra grounding after attending a beautiful dreamy home birth, Poppy’s Home birth, and this is the message I received: TO LEAVE THE NHS
Leaving the NHS as a midwife was never part of my plan, bearing in mind that, as an Italian midwife, the NHS was the very and only reason I moved to the UK…
So here is my story.
Coming for a completely medicalised training
Coming from a completely medicalised training, maternity care and mindset… we all looked at the UK with admiration, where midwives could work in autonomy, respected by families and by other health professionals, attending home births on their bike, working in birth centres… omg, birth centres were the ultimate dream… truly…
The tiny hospital on the lake
So I had just qualified and I did not want to work in an Italian hospital… but after graduation I was “volunteering” (aka counted in the numbers, working days and nights, weekdays and weekends, but not paid one euro) in a tiny hospital on the lake… That experience was great, I learned about water birth and birthing in different positions and even suturing (there was no doctor in the building in the night, ever)…
Very nice. Sadly that hospital closed, but luckily enough, thanks to my endless perseverance in finding other ways to work as a midwife, I managed to find two independent midwives in my area, and one of them was retiring from birth (they had been working together for 40+ years), and so they said, maybe you could learn and be my second… omg, my dream… They were my midwife medicine. In fact they were medicine women. But that’s another story…
They said, if something is not giving you energy, it has to go
Working with them was magic, but I felt I was explaining to everyone, every single day, that what I was doing was not some kind of witchery, and that being a home birth midwife was perfectly legal and also a safe choice… That was taking a lot of my energy, and they said to me, “as women we are capable of holding life and death…”, “if something is not giving you energy and nurturing you, it has to go…”
And so, despite the fact that working with them was a complete dream come true, I always had another dream, which was moving to the UK… where midwifery was also a dream…
And so I did
I attended one birth with Lucia, and applied for my NMC PIN, and applied to midwife jobs in the UK, and got all of them… all the ones I wanted (except one in Cornwall, I didn’t get that one and I was so pissed off). I worked in London and then in Cambridge, in wonderful birth centres and teams, and then I moved to Brighton because I knew this was the place with a lot of home birth… and here is where I have been for the past ten years…
Learning and growing with this community, working in autonomy, attending home births, in safety , respect a d trust bacause home birth is a safe option for many! My heart has been full for a long time… doing the job of my dreams…
The system is not broken
Sadly the situation has changed (I’ll keep that for another post), and we all know that the physiology of birth, and the people wanting home birth, are the most affected in this era of so-called crisis of maternity, or “broken” system, or physiological birth ideology…
You know what… the system is not broken. It is working very well, and achieving exactly what they intend and want to achieve.
So, as it happened before… what is not serving me has to go…
So here I am… a long story of why it took so long to leave… Basically, I just wanted to be a home birth midwife, supporting families wanting to have a home birth and birth in peace in their home, surrounded by love. I was happily doing that for the past 10+ years in the NHS… I can’t do that anymore… so this is not the place for me anymore!
What if it all works out?
I ventured into independent midwifery two years ago with Rise, and I want to fully trust that this, and birth, works! I always ask you to trust the unknown, and invite you to dive deep into transformation, because transformation is a gift… right?!
About time that I do the same…
What if it all works out? What if my dream of supporting you as you deserve can support me and my family fully? What if this is a chance to be the bestest version of myself, and the best midwife I can be for you?
One birth at a time, we change the world.
With love, V
