Flowers, feedback, and a plastic bucket for a vagina
As a first year student midwife I felt entirely inadequate. Everyone else looked as though they were winning, and I had days when I couldn't bear to make eye contact or say my own name out loud. I was working with a mentor who appeared more chipper than a Blue Peter presenter, and who loved her job and the women she met unreservedly.
When I qualified at the beginning of the year, I told another mentor that I was aiming to be safe and mediocre as an NQM. She pulled me up on it and told me that if she knew me at all, she was willing to bet that I'd be aiming for anything other than mediocre. A similar conversation happened with another friend, with a similar outcome. I'd spent three years of training absolutely petrified that I'd fail or be kicked off the course and, as a consequence, I was too afraid to admit how important midwifery was to me and how much I wanted to be good at it. I still feel the same, occasionally afraid to shout about how much I love my job in case someone turns round and tells me I'm rubbish at it.
At the end of my first year, I had a completely new kind of mentor. She insisted that I perform a vaginal examination when admitting a woman in labour. I don't remember the name of the woman or whether it was her first baby. I can't recall whether she went on to have her baby during my shift or not. What I remember is the examination. I remember a skinny clinic bed in the middle of an assessment room. I know that I had my back to the door and I didn't feel safe. I can still feel my mentor gawping over my left shoulder as I perched by the woman's side. I remember the bright lights and the sweat pouring off of me, despite it being the end of winter. My arms went numb as adrenalin and fear coursed through my body. I could feel the blood pumping in my temples and I wanted to cry, scream, run away. I wanted to push my mentor away, I could feel her breathing down my neck, both figuratively and literally. I told her I didn't know how dilated the woman's cervix was, because I couldn't find her cervix. I was paralysed with terror. My mentor – and I use the term loosely because she didn't mentor me that day – insisted that I could find the cervix, I insisted that I couldn't, and she insisted that I could. We went round in circles like a dog chasing its own tail. I don't want to remember the woman, because I don't want to put a face to the examination. Selfishly, I don't want to feel worse than I already do. I'm not sure how I kept my composure in the room, but as soon as I let the door close behind me I sobbed. I sobbed because I had failed, because I was afraid, because I felt as though I had violated her. I cried because I hadn't felt safe and I hadn't felt listened to, because my mentor's insistence was too much for me to bear. I cried because I was frustrated by my lack of ability and because I felt as though that was the end of the line for my midwifery training. When I came out of my hiding place in the toilet, my mentor was laying in wait. She told me (as a first year student, I hasten to add) that I wouldn't be able to be a midwife if I couldn't do a vaginal examination. What I've carried with me since that moment was that I would never be a midwife and that I would never be good enough.
The onslaught and humiliation of that examination continued for the rest of the shift. My mentor decided that she would make a vagina. Imagine a mop bucket covered with a green plastic apron, in which she had cut an opening. She took great delight in literally running around the unit collecting different things to put in the vagina bucket, and she made me close my eyes and stick my arm into the bucket and guess what was inside. A pot of jelly, a banana were amongst her loot. I wish I was joking, but I'm not. Her attempts at whatever it was she was trying to achieve were futile. She managed to make me feel small and stupid and insignificant, humiliated. I hated her that night, but worst of all I hated myself, and my fear of vaginal examinations reached new heights.
Following that night, I was always aware that I would probably never measure up. I knew that if I worked hard enough at university I would be able to crack the academic work, but I thought that I would always lack the clinical skills I needed. I tried to prove that mentor wrong by working every hour or minute I could spare, and working more hours than necessary during placement. I just wanted to be good enough and to prove the doubters wrong. This weekend I worked with the mentor who nearly brought my dreams crashing down around me. This time, I was a qualified midwife and we were on a more equal footing. I didn't need her to grade me or sign off my hours or pass judgement.. The women and I were able to create our own care plans. I was able to talk to the woman who was labouring, care for her, love her, and I was able to work alongside an incredible first year student midwife to welcome the woman's baby into the world. I wanted to say to the ex-mentor, “see, today I can do this, I can be a midwife. I am a midwife”. I'm not sure I'd realised how angry I'd been about how my mentor had treated me when I was a first year. I was furious but almost grateful that she gave me something to fight against. I was scared that I wouldn't be any good at the emotion work of the job, that I'd crumble in the face of women, that I wouldn't be able to cope with the communication side of the job. I realised that she was wrong, and I realised that my biggest fear had been unfounded.
Last week two women from my antenatal clinic brought their babies to see me, and they also brought me cards and flowers. The first woman told me that even when things went wrong for her, I made her laugh and that I had done a great job of looking after her. As a new midwife who, every morning, wonders how on earth I got lucky enough to be doing this job, getting positive feedback is priceless. The second woman told me that I'd given her and her baby the best possible start together by breaking her down and building her back up and getting her the help she needed. The first time I met her in clinic I made her cry by calling her out on her statement of “I'm fine”. Our professional relationship then came full circle: after she left, I had a little cry in the office because her words touched a nerve and because throughout my training I had some incredible women who took the time to break me down (gently and kindly) and build me up in the same way. I understand her gratitude because I feel it too. I'm so grateful to the team who have got my back, to the mentors who taught me and waited for me to be ready, to the lecturers, midwives, friends who have seen me through thick and thin, to those who make me feel safe enough to want to be more than mediocre, to the women who have given me feedback, and even to the mentor who taught me how not to be a mentor.
