A New Life: A teacher retrains to become part of the life-altering experience that is childbirth. Theresa Judge reports
Catherine Dunne was 52 when she returned to college to train as a midwife, starting a few months before her youngest daughter enrolled at university. She had qualified as a teacher 30 years earlier.
"I absolutely loved teaching and I didn't give up teaching and become a midwife because I hated teaching. I became a midwife because there was an opportunity to become a midwife," she says.
She took part in a pilot project offered in 2000 which gave women who had not qualified as nurses the opportunity to train as midwives. Such "direct entry" courses are commonplace in many other countries.
The pilot scheme was run by Trinity College in Dublin in conjunction with the Rotunda hospital in Dublin and Our Lady of Lourdes hospital in Drogheda.
"It is very late to start something new, but up to then there was no opportunity - this just came out of the blue," she says. She first heard about the course while at home listening to the radio one day and decided to apply.
A mother of three, she had always been interested in supporting women through childbirth and breastfeeding. She started a branch of Cuidiú, the Irish Childbirth Trust, in Castlebar shortly after moving to Co Mayo from Dublin in the mid-1980s.
"I wanted to be a midwife because I consider childbirth to be an extremely life-altering experience and had experienced it as such myself."
She stresses the importance of women receiving good care before, during and after the birth of their baby, saying she believes women's experience of childbirth has long-lasting consequences for them.
Despite being the oldest in the group of 20 who started the course - just 15 graduated - she adapted easily to being a student.
"It was a very heavy, very intense course, without academic holidays, but I found it hugely stimulating.
"I found it wonderful to be in a learning capacity after being in a teaching capacity. It was a great luxury to be a student. The clinical area was daunting but also very interesting," she says.
She also became good friends with the other women doing the course who ranged in age from 19 to their mid-40s.
"We all came from very different backgrounds but we'd all been consumers of the health services - between us we had at least 25 babies - but it was great fun, there was great camaraderie and bonding and I loved all that."
She admits it was "difficult financially after having a nice teacher's salary" but the prospect of having to pay all the monthly bills on a student bursary did not deter her.
She and her classmates were "a huge novelty" in the hospitals because they were "coming in off the streets with no medical background" when all other trainee midwives were nurses.
She says she was "bowled over" by how helpful other staff were "even though life would be fast and furious'.
They were sometimes asked how they could cope without a nursing qualification.
"It could be seen as a disadvantage but if you approach midwifery from the point of view that women giving birth are healthy and are undergoing a physiological process, then one does not need to be a nurse to be a midwife," she says.
She has been working in the Rotunda since she graduated in 2003 and is currently in a pre-natal ward for women who are admitted to hospital early due to complications.
She says good communication skills are vital. "You really need to be tuned in to a woman, to be able to read her signs and signals, and to respond appropriately to her needs. You need to have a good feeling for women and to care for them."
The short length of time she has to spend with each woman is, she says, one of the big contrasts with teaching.
"In teaching you had the children for a whole year, you had a whole year to work out the processes with them, but in midwifery I have a woman for a few hours, a day, at most a few days, and a lot has to be accomplished in that time."
She is, however, continuing to use her teaching skills as she now has student midwives working with her.
She agrees the new career she has chosen is demanding, particularly given the pressure maternity services in Dublin have been under in recent years, but clearly she has no regrets. She enjoys working in a multidisciplinary team and says she finds the work challenging and stimulating. She is also conscious of the need to take time to relax on days off as the job demands high energy levels and the hours are long.
Before doing the course she had never seen a baby being born. Her own children were born by Caesarean section under general anaesthetic.
On the first two occasions she had hoped to have normal deliveries, and she believes it is important for women to inform themselves about childbirth and to be able to make informed choices but adds: "I don't think it is a good idea to approach childbirth as an accomplishment or to have very fixed goals. I think you have to be flexible around it because you don't know, until you actually embark on a labour, how it will go."
She remembers clearly the first mother she helped deliver a baby during her first year of training.
"I still think it's absolutely wonderful and amazing and it never loses its impact.
"It never, ever becomes routine - each birth is unique and amazing and astounding. It brings tears to your eyes every time and leaves you awestruck at how amazing the human body is and the whole miracle of birth, because it is a miracle."