My Midwifery Journey #1

I am officially a student midwife!

One day I must have just thought "I want to be a midwife for the rest of my life." Now that I think about it, that's an extremely scary thought yet at the same time not scary at all. That's how I know that I'm doing the right thing.

Now, here's the story that I seem to have told a thousand times. Brace yourselves...it's a long one! For those who don't want to read it, skip all the purple text! :)

My name is Jackie, I'm 19 years old and have completed college/sixth form. As much as I would like to say that I chose to take a gap year, my A-level results left me no choice but to take a gap year. This meant that I would have to wait a whole year before I could resit my exams because there are no more January exams :( However taking a gap year was not a bad idea! I would be able to get a part time job to save up a little extra cash for uni and increase my volunteering to get more experience making my personal statement stronger.

My part time job is in retail, the people I work with are great but retail just isn't for me. It tired me out even though my shifts were so short. I was doing something that I wasn't interested in. "But you've never been a midwife, how do you know that you're not going to hate midwifery?" I hear you ask, well that's where my volunteering kicks in. 

I started volunteering February 2013 in a heart institute as a welcome receptionist (basically letting visitors in and out of the wards) before finally turning 18 in June 2014 and starting to volunteer in a maternity hospital (because the minimum age was 18). I'm still volunteering at both places and it really does give you an insight of working in a clinical area, especially in the maternity hospital! I had the opportunity to talk to mothers, midwives, maternity care assistants, staff nurses, neonatal nurses and neonatologists learning about their roles and seeing first hand the ups and downs of being a midwife. The fact that the high stress levels didn't seem to bother me was how I knew that this was the job for me.

Story over... I still can't get into my head that I'm actually going to uni! I had my first offer in December which was when I started to think about the usual uni stuff like what I want to bring and what I needed to buy, how much money I wanted to save each month because the thought of being a poor student frightened me yet it's so inevitable that I've managed to embrace that fact that I can't go shopping whenever I want (not that I'll have the time) but figure out paying bills instead...urgh too soon to grow up :(

I have decided that I will document as much of my midwifery journey as possible on here as a way to de-stress and stay sane!

Until next time!

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