Jane Shields, Clinical Midwife Consultant: So, we’re thinking about why babies cry.
Parenting Education Client: Give it to someone else. You can tell I haven’t done this before. I would have no idea, I would be like please stop crying.
Jane Shields, Clinical Midwife Consultant: My name is Jane Shields and I’m a Clinical Midwife Consultant at John Hunter Hospital.
What about things like putting baby in the bath or maybe some nice skin to skin contact?
So the consultant part of my role means that I provide support in the area of parenting education to the 13 maternity sites across Hunter-New England.
Kelly’s mum? Yes, Denise.
Hello Denise, I’m Jane. Hi Jane.
I’m Ben. Hello Ben, how are you?
It provides information to women and their partners so that they can make an informed choice about their birth, about their care, and how they’re going to care for their new baby. Knowledge, absolutely, knowledge is power, and it’s the essence of what we do.
So we’ll head on in, so come in.
Not only do the participants learn from each other within the programmes, they develop relationships with each other. Community is so important.
Good luck. So you’re here for a couple of days now, you getting things sorted and recover?
Today’s been a great day. I caught up with a woman on the post-natal unit who had recently attended one of our programmes.
So how is it now, was any of that knowledge that you gained through the education useful for you now?
New Mum: It definitely didn’t go as planned at all, but it was nice to be able to go in and know that every step of the way, we were educated and we knew what was coming.
Jane Shields, Clinical Midwife Consultant: So what about now baby’s born?
New Dad: Like when he’s hungry, we wouldn’t have known any of that sort of stuff so it’s very handy now to see it in practice.
Jane Shields, Clinical Midwife Consultant: Yes, so how’s the breastfeeding going?
New Mum: Good. Yeah.
Getting there.
New Dad: Just, great moment when we first heard him cry, held him up, for us was a very magical moment, very good.
Jane Shields, Clinical Midwife Consultant: And for you?
New Mum: Yeah amazing.
Jane Shields, Clinical Midwife Consultant: Amazing, it’s a moment you never forget, huh?
There’s nothing more satisfying when couples in the programme actually come in and they’re actually quite anxious or they’re worried about the birth, ‘oh gosh how am I going to do this’, and then at the end they turn to you and they say, ‘you know what, I can actually do this. I can do this. This is really do-able’.
I’m proud to be a midwife because I have the opportunity to make a difference in a woman’s pregnancy journey, her birthing journey and becoming a new parent.