Anni Bannerman had started a new job in a new city when she was surprised to discover she was pregnant. “I’d more or less given up on ever having a family, and now my husband and I were embarking on a very different life in another part of the country,” she says.
Pregnancy changed everything – but in the circumstances in which she found herself, it was isolating. “I didn’t have close friends in Manchester, and my family were thousands of miles away in South Africa, where I grew up,” she says. Plus, she had another reason to be worried: when she was a child, her father had been very severely injured in an accident. “As a result, I was very wary of medical people and hospitals, and being pregnant meant I was going to have to engage with them. It was all quite scary, and unsettling.”
All of which meant she was feeling very apprehensive when she walked into her first antenatal appointment. “I was about 10 weeks pregnant, and very worried,” she says. “I knew they’d have to take blood samples too, and I’m terrified of needles. But then I met Bernie – and she was so warm and friendly, and reassuring. I remember saying to her I don’t like medical people. And she said: ‘I’m not a medical person, I’m a midwife.’”
Bernie Quigley has been a midwife for 25 years: she’s self-effacing about her talents, but very clear about what matters most in the relationship between mothers and midwives. “It’s communication, and I know I can communicate well with women,” she says. “I’m not interested in ticking boxes. Well, I am, because I have to, but most of all I’m interested in the mother-to-be. It’s all about building trust. What women need is a bit of kindness – they want to know that someone has their back and is there for them.”
Throughout her pregnancy, Bannerman, 35, knew Quigley was there for her – which is why Bannerman is now supporting Pampers’ #thankyoumidwife campaign, which donates £1 to the Benevolent Fund of the Royal College of Midwives every time a parent uses the hashtag on social media. This gives parents the opportunity to say thank you to their midwife, helping to address the fact that one out of three midwives do not feel appreciated (pdf) or valued enough for their hard work.
Right from her first appointment, she knew she was someone she could confide in – and in her situation, that made a huge difference. “For the first three months I didn’t tell anyone I was pregnant, but I was going through morning sickness and my hormones were a bit crazy. So Bernie was the one person I could share it all with.”
A community midwife, Quigley is based in a leisure centre rather than a hospital, which made appointments feel less “medical” for Bannerman. “But every single time I saw her, she remembered I was very anxious around medical procedures. She would always say, when she was having to do something such as listening to the baby’s heartbeat: ‘Are you OK with this?’”
And at every appointment, Quigley would begin by asking: “How are you really doing?”
“What she meant was: ‘How are you managing with everything, how are you coping with work, how are you doing emotionally?’ She always took time to ask the right questions. When you’re pregnant you feel some of the professionals you’re dealing with forget you’re still a woman who goes to work, who has a partner, who has friends. But Bernie always made me feel like the full person I am.”
Bannerman didn’t especially love being pregnant, but she believes she worried about it a lot less because she knew she had Quigley on her side. “She went the extra mile for me. When she knew I was interested in having a water birth, she arranged for me to visit the birthing suite and to try out the birth pool, and she took me through all the equipment step by step so it wasn’t so scary for me. She helped me approach it as a normal and natural experience.”
Handling deliveries and working on the labour ward are often regarded as the glamorous end of midwifery; and while Quigley loves being at a birth with a woman she’s cared for during pregnancy, it’s not the most important element. “The bulk of the work you do with a mother-to-be is during the pregnancy. When you’ve demystified birth and made a woman feel cared-for and knowledgeable, she goes into labour in a far better place psychologically, and that impacts on her experience.”
Bannerman’s waters broke at home and she was admitted to hospital the following day. She was in labour for 42 hours and ended up having an emergency caesarean. “Bernie wasn’t in the hospital at the time but when she heard I’d gone into labour she came in to see me, although by that time I was being wheeled into the operating theatre. All she could do was wave to me as I passed by on the trolley, but I remember thinking: ‘It’s OK – Bernie is here.’”
When Bannerman and her baby, Elliana, returned home, Quigley was one of their first visitors – and she continued to visit over the next month. “She was the one calm, constant person I knew I could rely on,” says Bannerman. For Quigley, the trust the two had built up really came into play at this point. “The postnatal period can be tough, and you know when you’ve got a relationship that a mother isn’t going to say she’s fine if she really isn’t fine.”
A year on, Bannerman has returned to her job as a finance manager. Looking back, she says she would have “struggled desperately without Bernie’s guidance, calmness, sense of humour”.
“She did everything she could to ensure I was OK and happy throughout the process and preparation for the birth,” says Bannerman. “She’s a remarkable lady and a brilliant midwife, and I want to say a huge thank you to her.”
Quigley, for her part, says it’s a two-way street. “I get a huge amount out of my job, from the relationships I form with the women I work with and all that they give to me. Working in the NHS has got a lot harder in the years I’ve been doing it – more stresses, a lot more bureaucracy – but the relationships are what make it all worthwhile.”
