A Midwife’s Muse

And in the blue corner we have Dispatches, Channel 4, 8pm, Monday night, they are showing ‘Undercover Mother’, and then in the blue corner we have Maternity Services, aka ‘The Midwives’. I am so looking forward to this hour long programme which is promising to highlight the shortfalls in the maternity services. I reality I am sure that I will be sitting there cringing at some of the behaviour, berating the commentator when s/he says something that is obstetrically incorrect, and fuming if they interview anyone in authority who dodges the issue or passes the buck.

Us Midwives are to be balloted on strike action. Wow, that’s something to muse upon, will I, could I, should I? No. There, that was easy, what next? Will I work to rule? No. Should I? Yes. Why won’t I then? Hmm, it’s not that sort of job. I can just picture it, ‘Come on Sue, just a bit longer. I can just see baby’s head. Golly he’s got lots of hair. Oh right, I’m off now ‘cos my shift just ended. Yes, I know it’s a bad time but it’s always a bad time and you have go to go it alone so I can prove how worthy I am of a pay rise in line with the rest of the UK and how fed-up I am of the powers that be taking advantage of ‘goodwill’.’ I would love to be able to go on strike, or work to rule, but it’s impossible. I suppose midwives who pick up extra bank-shifts could not do them, or we could refuse to go to meetings outside of working time, the first would make the short staffing problem even worse and the second would only mean that the meetings missed would have to be re-scheduled and squeezed into an already log-jammed system. Lets just do what we always do, have a moan, but let the government get away with doing what they do best, rip us off. ( For anyone who doesn’t know why English midwives and nurses are cross, here’s the answer.) Anyway, I shall vote YES, just to shock them.