Celebrating our midwives - Laura Jones

5 May 2021

We are celebrating our nurses, midwives and operating department practitioners (ODPs) in a two-week long celebration during May that takes in the international recognition days for each profession. Today we're putting the spotlight on our midwives, so it's over to Laura Jones to tell us a bit about her role and profession.

Laura: I was all set to do a sports degree and then a neighbour had a baby and the midwife was visiting when I was there and I was so inspired by her care and compassion. It was then that I decided to train as a nurse, followed by completing my midwifery training when my eldest child was nearly 2. That was 14 years ago, I now have 4 children including a set of twins.

I was a Labour ward midwife for a good few years but I am now a specialist midwife in multiple pregnancies, so twins and triplets, and at Leeds Teaching Hospitals we have an enhanced service for those carrying multiple babies, which means that we see women more frequently throughout their pregnancy and we follow them from the beginning right through to the postnatal period, including providing care at their birth. We develop a very close bond with the patients and I feel very lucky to do this job.

The past year has been difficult for many of the women we work with and we can especially see that it has impacted on them post-natally. We’ve felt this as a team and we have stepped up our contact on the ward, encouraging our new mums to stay in hospital until they feel confident to go home, but it has been hard as they naturally want to be with their partner at home. We continue their postnatal care at home to continue to provide care and reassurance in those daunting first few weeks

I love my job so much, the ability to make a positive impact at such an important part of someone’s life is a real privilege.