Dear supporters,

NHS midwives are desperately struggling to provide safe maternity care, here is one statement from a current NHS midwife sent to me on social media.

"this is the face of a broken NHS midwife. sorry to sound dramatic but i’m also not. this post takes energy that i don’t have but i feel so much need to raise awareness to people about the maternity crisis. my experiences below are not unique to me, they are happening to every single nhs midwife i know.

the conditions we are working in feel so dangerous, scary and impossible. we are so short staffed it feels horrendously unsafe. i am endlessly asking myself how long we can continue working like this.

i love my job. i love being a midwife. but i question how long it is possible in these conditions. nothing seems to change. we’ve had more reports into the failings of safe care than i can count. poor outcomes. unnecessary deaths. a failure to escalate appropriately. all of it comes down to burnt out staff, and because there just isn’t enough of us.

on Friday i worked from 8am - 10pm without a break. when i finished my shift at 8.30pm there was no one to handover to, so i kept on working. when i say working, i mean keeping lives safe. yesterday i worked from 8.30am and got home at 11pm. i had 2 births, i helped to resuscitate 1 newborn baby, i had to transfer my patient to theatre when i spotted something was wrong, i sutured and provided labour care and supervised students. when i pulled my emergency buzzer there was a moment when i thought will the help i need even be there. where are the midwives that i need. where are the doctors.

i ended my shifts in tears. i’ve cried again this morning. i keep hearing the emergency buzzer over and over. i’m not saying any of this for sympathy or because i’m not “resilient” or because i hate being a midwife. but i’m saying this because all of it is so far from being anywhere near good enough. today i feel broken. women + babies deserve so much more. midwives deserve so much more. we didn’t go into the profession for this.

i fail to understand how nothing has changed, how many poor outcomes and reports we need to have before things get better. how many midwives have to leave the profession until we get more. how bad do things have to get? midwives are leaving in their droves and i don’t blame them.

we need change."

We presented the petition to 10 Downing Street on the 17th of February 2022 with over 124,000 signatures with no acknowledgement from the government. We need change now! Please share the petition with your family, friends and colleagues today. With more signatures and support from the public hopefully we can get the government to listen. 

Every person deserves to be born safely, including your loved ones,

Kind regards

Cheryl Samuels

Midwife