Hi my name is Lorna Killick and I'm a midwife, staff midwife at the National
Maternity Hospital in Dublin. I've been working there for the last 15 years
ten of them I've been a midwife. My journey to midwifery probably started
when I was in first year and I did my career's project on pregnancy and
childbirth, then for my Leaving Cert I did for my Home Economics project I
did pregnancy and childbirth and my first experience of the National Maternity
Hospital was when my sister-in-law had my niece in, she'll be 20 now in September.
I think you'll never forget the first time when you see a baby being born and
that's normally when you're a student. My first baby that I seen born was on the
28th of January 2008. I absolutely love being a midwife I can't imagine
being anything else I think being there when, it's your most vulnerable time in
your life is when you're particularly on your first baby because you have fear of
the unknown. At the moment, so I've worked in delivery ward. I've worked in the
postnatal unit I've worked around Holles Street. But I suppose when you think back
to nine months ago when women got pregnant nobody could have foreseen
that this was coming. Back when we were competing with all the other maternity
hospitals for the first baby at midnight on New Year's Eve nobody knew what
2020 was going to bring. I went in one Monday night thinking I was going to
work on the labor ward and I got a phone call to say that could I go to
work on the Covid Unit which obviously I was anxious about but I've done the HDU course
which is the High Dependency Maternity Care module and I went up to
work then on the Covid Unit that night. Where we hit the ground running but nothing
prepared us for this there was no dress rehearsal there was no planning there
was no it just was here and that was it we had to get on with it.
Like pregnancy and childbirth is all part of our normal being a being a woman being a
couple of being a partner being. It's a normal life event in extraordinary times
and we had to try and make the Covid Unit where antenatal patients and
postnatal patients were coming through we had to try and make it as normal as
possible and to care for them, to provide them extra care but also to provide the
kind of care that all women deserve for them and their babies. When you do
have somebody who is sick and you're wearing all your PPE and you have your
face mask on and everything and we got a lot of women in whose, their first
language isn't, isn't English and it's you can communicate through
facial expressions through your eyes you'd normally their partners are there and they
can help but it's very difficult if your partner's not there when you're
being induced and then you're trying to talk, coach a woman through pushing with
your face is covered you're trying to communicate through
muffled masks with your eyes and in any way that you possibly can. I think it's
very hard for women to come in and be induced and be on the ward and you have
all these plans or all these expectations of how you think it's gonna
be and then your told your support partner can't be, come in I think it's
probably being easier for women because they're in the room and they're getting
support the poor dads are sitting like men and waiting out their cars on the on Holles
Street because they want to be close to the hospital and they're just waiting on
that call whether it's to come in because she's in labor
or they're sitting outside waiting in order to be prepared for a caesarean
section or they're waiting to pick their partner up that they haven't seen for three
or four days. So the dads came in and they were there for delivery of their
baby and we've seen some harrowing scenes at the lift on the labor ward
where dads were going home not knowing whether they were going to see their
partner the next day or whether it be three days, four days. We had patients
whose partners had underlying illnesses themselves who couldn't come in, we
delivered babies where we rang dads afterwards on whatsapp video calls and
just wasn't meant to be like that. So I've had three babies myself two of them
born in Holles Street with the community midwifery team and one of them was
born here at home. My husband Eric he's an essential service as well so he's
been working throughout the whole Covid 19 as well but I think in the first week
when I found out I was working on the Covid ward obviously you're anxious you
don't want to be coming from the hospital back to your house your fear is
that you're gonna bring it back your family. We had to sit down and make
choices, make life decisions and we've been doing a lot of nights, been doing,
working a lot of weekends because as I said for childcare I'm trying to work
opposite to my husband so if he's around during, over the weekend I'm trying to
work then trying to do. I think everybody is just juggling and just trying to do
their best in a difficult situation. But you know I feel for my kids that they
haven't had us here, me or my husband here doing all the cooking and the baking
and homeschooling has had to just take second place now too. We've just
been using, my sister is in early education and she hasn't been working so
I think they dread the phone call when I ring, any of my family because I'm
probably all out of favours and they don't know whether I'm ringing for a debrief
some counselling maybe some childcare maybe some shopping or just to chat over a
glass of wine over whatsapp but I've been very lucky and that I do have that
support and I do have my family around me because I don't know what we would
have done for childcare if we didn't. I think we have brought everything back to
basics and I think we've all realised that family is what's most important and
you see in Holles street as families are being made and on Facebook and social
media of grandparents meeting their grandchildren through the window. I think
it's brought everything back to reality and its slowed life down and I suppose
what I miss most is the camaraderie, being able to hug people, being able to
hug my mother, she's been working frontline as well in the pharmacy
and just normality of what's, it's not, not normal for us not to be able to hug
women, to support women, to be afraid to touch people because you're afraid not
only are you gonna get it but that you're gonna be the one that passes it
on and that makes somebody ill. We've trying to stay back you're trying to
provide as much comfort and care to women as you can
but trying to do it from a safe distance which is hard when a woman is
in the throes of labor or she's distressed or she's just had a poor
diagnosis, she's on her own and her partner's not with her. You know people
are on in there on the streets and they're clapping and they're calling us
heroes I think the real heroes in this are the dads who are sitting in cars
and they are the dads in waiting. They are sitting on, if you walk down Holles Street now
there's just cars with Dads sitting out there just waiting for a text,
waiting to see their partners, waiting to see their, meet their babies, the families
that are sitting at home waiting to hear from their, from their loved ones and for
the women whose treatments have been postponed or the women who are waiting
for fertility treatments and everything that's being put on the back burner for
to wait for this is over as I said nobody knows when this is all gonna finish so
we're just hoping that there will be a vaccine or that life will eventually return to
normal that our services in The National Maternity Hospital will go back
to the way they were and that families can support families and our dads can be
there. So I got to work in the postnatal ward where I got to sit with the mum and
remember that it's normal for us to sit with them and help them feed their
babies and I got to walk a lady down onto Holles Street where the dad was outside
so excited to see his partner that he hadn't seen in three days, four days and
to drive his baby home with the hazard lights on. To be part of that is
something really special. People often say to you when they're
in the throes of labor that, how do you do this how do you watch women go
through this and you're like, we can see what you can't see and that I know that
by the end of my shift I'm going to see you with your baby, your little baby lying in
your arms and your, everything that you've been through is forgotten and all
that's important is what's in your arms.