Ep 72 Jenny Hall on stitching together life, work, and spirituality through midwifery

Ep 72 (ibit.ly/Re5V) Tomasina Stacey Evolution of a Midwife into a Maternal Health Research Leader on Stillbirth

@PhDMidwives  #MidTwitter  #research #midwifery  

research - https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jenny-Hall

Embark on a heartfelt odyssey with Dr. Jenny Hall, as she narrates her transformation from a nurse to a revered midwife, unveiling the layers of her career that began in the vibrant corridors of a London obstetrics ward in the early '80s. , Jenny recounts the evolution of midwifery practices and the personal milestones that mirror the progression of healthcare and education. Her tales of advocating for part-time work to balance the demands of motherhood with a flourishing career echo the sentiments of countless professionals striving for harmony in their lives.

As Jenny opens her heart about the trials and triumphs of nurturing both new life and budding midwives, we are reminded of the delicate dance between clinical precision and the holistic touch that defines exceptional care. She passionately shares her pursuit of a positive narrative in midwifery, while candidly discussing the necessity of continuous learning within the dynamic landscape of medical education. Her contribution to the field extends to the crafting of educational modules, aiming to preserve the time-honored tradition of midwifery within our rapidly modernizing world.

Finally, Jenny's reflections on the blending of creativity with professional rigor offer a profound perspective on coping with work-related stress. Through the communal art of quilting and the poignant Knitted Midwives Project, she illustrates how handcrafted expressions can serve as a powerful conduit for awareness and solidarity. Her story culminates in the heartfelt celebration of her academic achievements alongside her family, inspiring a sense of possibility for listeners to find their own equilibrium in the intersecting realms of career, personal fulfillment, and the ever-present call to mentorship and collaboration.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:27

Thank you so much for joining me tonight, as per usual. Can you introduce yourself please?

Speaker 2: 0:33

Sure, I'm Dr Jenny Hall from the UK. I'm actually a semi retired, been a qualified midwife since 1983 and I was a nurse before that, because actually you couldn't become a midwife without being a nurse at that time. But actually I didn't want to be a midwife, I wanted to be a nurse.

Speaker 1: 0:56

so let's go there a minute.

Speaker 2: 1:00

Incidentally, the female surgical ward that I was working on in London actually became one of the first AIDS wards in the country and was opened by Princess Diana. So you know it's my claim to fame completely, but I had nothing to do with it, so it would start open the year after I left. But it also gives an idea of actually where I've come from. You know I've actually where what was going on at the time as well. We've been through a lot of different kind of infections. You know now we've been through Covid. So anyway, let's carry on with that. I don't do clinical practice at the moment. I'm involved in educating students and assessing. Occasionally I also support master's students as well. I've been doing that for the past few years. I assess PhDs. I've done external examining. I also mentor and assess for the what we call the higher education academy programme, which is for people becoming lecturers in this country. So that's not just for midwives.

Speaker 1: 2:12

And that's a fellowship in the Senate, fellowships and the principal fellowships.

Speaker 2: 2:16

That's right. I'm senior fellow myself, so I do that through a particular university. What else do I do? Yeah, and also I do writing and editing and creating educational packages for midwives, which is called MATFLIX, if people don't know what that is, and that's yeah. So I kind of have a bit of a portfolio going on and if anybody wants me, here I am.

Speaker 1: 2:44

Make sure to post it up for some links when we kind of do the posting as well, yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:49

I also do quite heavy on on social media. Still, you know, trying to sort of be positive about midwifery in a world where people seem to be wanting to be negative about us quite a bit.

Speaker 1: 3:01

Far too easy to see the negative in, especially social media. Okay, so let's go back, then, to how did you get into midwifery if you wanted to be a nurse?

Speaker 2: 3:15

Yeah, there you go. That's the question, isn't it? Well, I started to want to be a nurse from the age of three and, apart from the fact, I did actually want to be a ballet dancer, but I wasn't the right shape and wasn't quite good enough at it. So, but I did get my first nursing uniform and that's it. That's just where it went.

Speaker 2: 3:38

The whole of my schooling career, everything was focused on the fact I'm going to be a nurse. That's what I'm going to do, and, as I said, I ended up in the Middlesex Hospital in London, which was now shut, unfortunately, but it was a very well known hospital at that time and I loved it. But then, in the second year, you either chose at that time to do what they called obstetrics, which is a three month program, or you did psychology and or psychiatry, and I decided that I was going to do obstetrics and I was fascinated, absolutely fascinated, by the experience of the midwives. There was a particular person called Kate Caldwell who was the, the practice developed, what they call now practice developed midwives. But she was training us at the time, or supporting us at the time, and in fact she became quite high up in the, the Royal College, midwives later on, so I got to know her again a bit more. Yeah, cool, but I was. I was inspired and I was also fascinated because in that particular area of the country of London it was very multicultural, which I hadn't experienced in my my background before, but it was. It was fascinating as well from the fact that they would want to do rituals in relation to, to their birth, which again was something that I started to question.

Speaker 2: 5:15

That's really where I started my research journey, because I really started to question then, why is it in in our culture, in our British white middle-class culture?

Speaker 2: 5:30

So that was something is is why do we not see birth as being a, a powerful ritual process, like other cultures do?

Speaker 2: 5:40

And I really did start that question because I was seeing the cultures around death that we were doing, about the laying out that we are doing and also about hospice care which was being developed at that time, that there seemed to be an importance about the end of life. Yeah, but why were we not seeing birth as being important? So I really did start to to question on that, that kind of process in myself, and then I decided I think actually I might be going down the missionary route and actually if you want to do that, you need to do midwifery. So perhaps I better go and do that. So I joined an 18 month course it had changed from 12 months to 18 months at that point and moved excuse me, moved out of London into a different part of the country and trained to be a midlife and the rest is history, as they still say. I kind of fell into it and loved it and stayed ever since so where did you work when you had finished your midwifery training?

Speaker 1: 6:54

what kind of models of care did you work in?

Speaker 2: 6:56

ah well, the models of care back in the 1970s and 80s. My word, I could tell you a few stories about that. Induction of labour. Um, yeah, no, actually the. Where I was in the country they had, um, one of the highest home birth rates actually in the country in the UK at that time. So the home birth rate was around five percent.

Speaker 2: 7:18

Doesn't sound very much, but it was high, doesn't, doesn't but it was high and the rest of the country, I think, was around under under one percent. Perhaps if you did the whole country, it was one percent and but here. So as a student, I had the utter privilege again of being able to go out into the community and to see this community kind of work and I was thinking how is it so different for the women who are having birth in this community space, in their own homes, versus what we were doing in the hospital? I mean, I'm ashamed now sitting here and talking about it and I know other people have talked about this, but but actually you know, everything was done by rote when, when we talk about midwifery back in the 1970s, 80s, we did not have evidence, there was no evidence.

Speaker 2: 8:12

I started my training, my and I call it training because it's different to now, but it was training and you wore your uniform to go into the, into the, the classroom, because it was in the hospital and you could get called up to the ward at any time and say come and see this twin placenta that's just been born. Bring the students up, come up and do this, come and, and it was. It was that kind of learning by rote that we did. I could do the mechanisms of labor off by heart. Now still, you know, because everything was in a box. The library was literally in a little room that was kind of like the size of a bathroom. It was so tiny. There were no books there were, there was nothing, and and I talked to students about this now and they look at me with their their jaw kind of dropped we didn't have computers, for goodness sake, haha.

Speaker 2: 9:07

I mean, the first piece of midwifery research that was done was published was in 1981, which was on enema's, and we were doing um, we were doing um shave enema bath. Yep, for any woman that stepped through the hospital, whether they were in established labor or not, and the number of babies that were born in the bath were were incredible. You know, I could, I could talk about this for ages, but, but, but this was the kind of world that I was in. So when I qualified, actually I ended up doing the rotation that everybody did within the hospital but thinking actually I really want to get out into community. You can't get out of the community at that stage until you were at sister level yeah you know, it was just not not the way to do it.

Speaker 2: 10:01

You couldn't just step out there. There weren't rules available. Um, so I was, I was doing my best within the, the, the hospital, trying to be a little bit what the word is radical, um, to, for example, if I said to you that you know that, like that, the labor ward rooms, they had windows. The labor group sorry, the labor ward doors had windows on them so that anybody who was outside could look through and see what was going on. So, so there I was back in the 80s putting paper on the windows to stop people from from looking in.

Speaker 2: 10:37

Yeah, so I was known as a bit of a troublemaker. I said excellent, but I haven't stopped ever since doing a troublemaker. Um, but yeah, but it was those kind of things that I was questioning all the time and trying to sort of to think about this, this kind of spiritual experience, I suppose more as well, and trying to support people to, to, to look at birth a little bit differently. And so education for me was also extremely important, and as a student, as as a sorry, as a nurse, I was also felt that teaching and educating students was so important. Because if you want to get the best midwives in the future, you've got to invest in the students and to to develop them, to to be the best, best one. So I really I love teaching. I loved not educating, I suppose, is the word I would use now really, um, and so I did look, started to think about actually, perhaps I need to get into education as the next step.

Speaker 1: 11:44

So did you end up? You mentioned kind of thinking about missionary work. Did you end up doing some of that or that was kind of like that plan, but life took you on the parallel kind of pathway.

Speaker 2: 11:56

Yeah, I didn't end up going abroad. There was lots of reasons why, yeah, lots of reasons why, and I was because but partly, you know, love comes along, that that sort of kind of trips you up a little bit Yep.

Speaker 1: 12:13

I tell my students now, if they're young and single, to go explore, go interstate, go overseas. Have your adventures now, because it's a lot easier when you're young and single, when you have the energy, than when you actually have a family and then you've kind of got other responsibilities that stop that progress. But to have as much fun as you can when you're younger and also when you're single.

Speaker 2: 12:37

Yeah, I'm also saying I'm not having fun and not didn't have fun, but it was a different kind of journey, yeah, different pathway and certainly in the UK, you know, midway free became a different, different place as well.

Speaker 2: 12:51

It became a bit more political.

Speaker 2: 12:55

And I was, I was, I suppose I was on that trajectory with a lot of people at that time, about continuity of care and about the importance of it and about, about, as I say, about, the politics side of it, of of actually how do we improve things, how do we get into into improving services and getting things better for all women, not just, not just for those who are fortunate enough to be in GP units, which were the birth centers in the past, and community based care. So, and of course, by by 1992, changing what we call changing childbirth came out, which was an important political documents and also the other side of it was it was was actually the politics of clinical grading. I mean, I got, did get myself involved a little bit in the political side of trying to stand up for midway free and I did get. I became chair of the local branch of the Royal College of Midwives and was, you know, trying to try and to stick my neck out a little bit to try and support the changes that that were going on the unit.

Speaker 1: 14:17

Things don't change without leaders. We need people to step up, to have to show the pathways that that lead to change, but also to show the ways that change occurs, and it's something that, for current generations, we have to keep reminding them of what the past was and to show, because they keep saying, oh, it's really shit now and it's like, yeah, well, it was actually worse. This is the progress we've made. We have made some progress, but, more importantly, this is how we did it. This is what worked. And instead of going down the pathway of talking too much and people kind of going, yeah, yeah, we've heard it, we've heard it what actually worked, kind of like bringing the evidence in, bringing the return of investment, in talking about it on the same terms of the people you're talking to, that's what the leaders do. So that's by taking those roles is really important.

Speaker 2: 15:11

Yeah, I never call myself a leader. I never sort of got to sister stage because the politics of what was going on on a particular unit and my face did not fit.

Speaker 1: 15:23

Yeah, ranks, not everything. You still be a leader without the rank.

Speaker 2: 15:28

Well, it's sometimes it helps and it's important you know how you change things.

Speaker 2: 15:33

But but I did want to get into education and, actually reflecting on my career last night which is which is what I was doing to prepare for this I realized that quite a lot of my career has has sort of bended in or bent sorry, told bent in different directions due to how the goalposts moved politically or in education or in different ways, and actually how I adapted according to circumstances and how we also adapted as a family, because you know, I had babies, which also does make a difference to people's yes, and career paths, and one of the things was with my first baby, for example, and there was no part time work.

Speaker 2: 16:22

You came full time. Well, that was it, and I had to go back to work when she was seven weeks old. So my husband, bless him, has done an awful lot over my career to support childcare and and to manage things and to help through this process, and I had to take out grievance in order to get part time stuff. So you know, I've been through a little bit of actually trying to to buck the system and and realize for women what it's like out there in trying to do this kind of thing, and I was fully breastfeeding her for two years, still working full time to you know the, you know people look at me and go, how did you do it?

Speaker 2: 17:08

And I don't know. You know, I look back at it I think, goodness, and but we fought. In a way you have to fight to do these things sometimes. But yeah, goalposts and, and so education, yeah, really. So that's, that was the direction I wanted to.

Speaker 2: 17:25

But in order to get into education I then had to do another qualification. Which was to step into that at that time was the advanced development of midwifery. So I went to the Royal College midwives to do that sort of a course, part time course. What was the first person from our particular trust to have done that for about 10 years, because nobody else had wanted to go and do it? So, so did that. And then at the end of it, quite a lot of my compatriots went on to do the, the MTD, which was the midwifery teaching diploma, and I didn't. I decided to actually leave it for a year. I thought, right, I'm going to go back and I'm going to consolidate. Yeah, I'm going to become a sister, I'm going to get the grade, I'm going to do that, and then I'm going to do my teaching diploma and then the goalpost post change again. That that's when, sort of the clinical grading, political stuff came in, and then after that, what? Hang on a minute, where are we then? Oh yeah, and then I was pregnant.

Speaker 2: 18:35

So, oh yeah, this is the first of many, and so that that kind of shifted things. And then eventually we moved, moved to another part of the country with my husband's job. But I thought, well, actually, if I'm going to get into teaching and by that time so it was kind of on I did my, let's wet this out. So 1988, I did my ADM 89. And my colleagues went on to do the MTD. Then it changed because midwifery then went into universities, yeah, and so the goalpost then changed again. And if I wanted to actually get into education, because a lot of that courses at that time there starts to be a reduction on the number of teachers, educators, because courses consolidated and universities, so there were no roles, no posts, and I thought, right, well, the only way I'm going to get into education I need to do a master's degree, which always made me laugh Because I had failed my A levels.

Speaker 2: 19:52

I didn't tell you that earlier. A levels are kind of like the highest, what people call high in other countries. I failed them twice. So even if I'd wanted to be a nurse or a midwife now, I wouldn't have been accepted. I'd have to have gone down the French route or something to get anywhere near it. So for me to do a master's made me laugh, but it was a master's in research, reproduction and health which was based in Cardiff in Wales. Yeah, it was wonderful. I absolutely loved it. So by coursework it was. It was by coursework, yeah, and there were people from different professions there.

Speaker 1: 20:32

It was nice.

Speaker 2: 20:35

That was fabulous, but actually what I did for my dissertation, for that was what is spirituality? Oh which? Which, after all these years of trying to sort of think about it, there still was nothing written about it. Nothing Interesting.

Speaker 1: 20:56

Even though it's not in midwifery, because yeah, there was a lot in palliative care, but not in midwifery in beginning. Oh nice.

Speaker 2: 21:04

Exactly so. That's that's where I started on that process. I did, did my dissertation, did my, you know, did the whole thing and because also in the NM Now let me just get this right was at the ENB at that time, was at the nursing midwifery council I mean things are a blur, but but basically in the standards it did actually say at that time that you should give care. That included spirituality in it. It was kind of physical, emotional. Yeah, holistic care is it was being banded around by this and the spiritual bit was tagged on the end and the question was you know, actually, what is that? What is that? So I did that and then, once I had completed that, the person who assessed it, who was not a midwife, he said, well, you need to turn this into a book. And I went really Now, by that time I had written one or two things. You know, I had a couple of articles which been out there. You know, being involved with stuff and as a writer book you must be kidding.

Speaker 2: 22:14

So you can do it, you just just turn it. So I thought, well, might as well try that then. And but nothing else to do with all my kids. But you know. So it became midwifery mind and spirit, emerging issues occur which was eventually published oh, 2000, around that time. So it took a little bit of time to do it, but but yeah, so that that's, that's what I did. But but then from the connection that I had with the publishers who published that, they said, actually we could do with a new editor for the practicing midwife which had been around For a little, a very short time at that point, because it had emerged from the modern midwife. And I said, would you fancy doing that? And I went, well, ok, I'll have a go. I've never done anything like this before. Let's, let's have a go at that. Phew.

Speaker 1: 23:21

That's a different one, yeah.

Speaker 2: 23:23

Yeah. So I ended up doing that as well. So, yes, so with a book and then with that, and then, yeah, let's, let's go and do a bit of bit of teaching, which I did step into, and then we moved for different parts of the country again, by which time how many children and I got that was three. I think that's right. So then I went to work part time in in in Leeds, in With somebody wonderful called Professor Mary Renfrew, yeah, and I was. I was appointed as a lecturer, practitioner and, let no, a lecturer, researcher, which were new jobs there.

Speaker 2: 24:12

And that's really how I started to kind of get into research properly. I mean, I didn't get involved in many much at that time, not not huge amounts of research, but I began to really gain an understanding of what research was more about. If Mary's listening, I mean she has been one of the most inspirational people that I've ever worked with. She was wonderful. I mean, I wasn't even there for very long, but it was being in that culture of people who were doing research and trying to make a difference, and also I was educating and teaching and doing all that side of thing as well, and I did some book, chapter, book, chapter with her and all this kind of stuff. So it was, it was incredible, in fact.

Speaker 2: 25:03

Actually I think I became the editor of practicing my life after that and I think about that. That was also going on at the same time, okay, but but yeah so, so that that was wonderful. And then I fell pregnant again and yeah, so I didn't I wasn't there huge time. And then gold close again, change because my husband changed again. So we moved again. So so I've been kind of my. My journey has done an awful lot of moving around the country and and adapting things as a military wife moving around with all the postings.

Speaker 2: 25:47

Well, partly, or him following me as one of the but yeah. So then I got a substantive education job after that and then, of course, as soon as you step into education, if you've not had experience before, they then say, ok, then you need to do a teaching qualification. If you, so I, if you think the midwifery is not lifelong learning, I can tell you by from learning. So so I then ended up doing a PG cert and or what we call the PG. In fact, I had a postgraduate diploma in higher education. Is what my At that time which was also I only because of learning about, about really what education practices we think teach. You know what is teaching? What is education practice? Yes, Our polls apart, and so actually it's. It's being able to understand. That is so, so important for people who want to go into education.

Speaker 1: 26:57

Especially behind the scenes the understanding of the needs for curriculum design, the understanding of what involves in it in scaffolding and what that means and how you do it, and Learning objectives and how you kind of start and finish. Yeah, that stuff is much deeper knowledge than just going in and teaching someone how to take a blood pressure. There's a whole lot of other stuff when you're doing more than one single task. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 27:22

Yeah, and in fact, actually I don't like to talk about teaching, I don't like to talk about education. I like to talk about facilitating learning. Yep, because the more that I have gone on as an educator, as a, as a midwife, it's about facilitating this person in front of you to grow on their own, to find their own path, to be able to understand what is going on and to step into being a midwife without you know that you have the background. But but it's facilitating, facilitating their own learning. And I think I will say to a lot of students a lot of students do step into education thinking that somebody's going to stand up in front of them and just present it to them and say this is how you do it, this is what you do, go and get on with it. And I'm also concerned it's becoming more again backwards, into a tick box culture, that that people are not learning and not thinking about what they're doing and applying it to, to the physiology and seeing of this person in front of them. So that's another rant I could.

Speaker 1: 28:38

That are now join you on that rant that the critical thinking, the opportunity to explain why is their respite changing or why they're responding differently. But in the current climate of the health care system and I think the NHS and our health care system Obviously different after effects from COVID, but they're struggling, stuff are exhausted under staffing as rampant and that ability to actually think is being pushed out by now you need to get this task. You need to get this task, you need to take this, you need to discharge this. You just need to go through that so they're actually punished, or feel like they're being punished for actually taking the time to critically think about what they're doing and why they're doing it, and they're just going through the motions, which is so dangerous.

Speaker 2: 29:28

Yeah, absolutely. But that is taking me right back to when I was a student in you know, as a midwife. To start with that it was a Right, the lowest of the low, which was the first year student. You go from, do the urines, yep, and now it's kind of right, the health care assistant or maternity care assistant, you go off and do the urines. How are you going to get a whole thing about one person if you're not doing the whole thing?

Speaker 1: 29:55

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:59

This is where hair is so important to be, you know, looking at the whole person and what is going on for them and in their lives and that, that, that, that that has been.

Speaker 2: 30:13

You know, it's written through me like like a rock and so. So when I was educating at that time even I was, and I was very fortunate to, when I first started in this particular university, to have somebody who who had Recognized or read my book or had just said, wow, she's coming with spirituality, how can I use it in my, in my modules, excellent. And so it was yes, and I ended up Doing sessions on spirituality and actually Then trying to say to everybody you know, spirituality is, should not be a standalone session, it should be included in everything that you're teaching. It's a holistic approach we need to be thinking about, about actually what, what is the physical, emotional, spiritual, social, cultural impact of each of the things that we're talking about for this particular person? And and trying to trying to get that kind of whole person picture sort of being developed and talked about. So yeah, so I was very fortunate to be able to sort of start to develop that process really.

Speaker 1: 31:31

Cool. So where did you go after your post grade diploma in teaching them, because I'm sure the goalpost changed again that you need to keep upskilling.

Speaker 2: 31:42

I stayed. I stayed in the same place, remarkably, but I had another baby by then. So that's number five five, five daughters.

Speaker 2: 31:53

Yeah, I have very pretty Five daughters, and I will say out to the world that I was also very fortunate to have them all at home in a community based setting. So I'm very blessed I do know that, that, that my body just gives birth, and I'm very happy with that but also through the support of fantastic, fantastic midwives and a fabulous husband. Who who was willing to put up with that. Yeah, well, the next thing after that was actually, I think I need to do a bit more studying. You know I've not done enough studying in my life how, how, but but in order to progress again in education or if you want to change jobs, you need to have a PhD. Yeah, in the particular place where I was working, there was no professor of midwifery and, in fact, there was no particular culture of research, though it was beginning to develop. Some of my colleagues were also going down the route of a PhD and I thought, well, actually this is the natural progression. I do need to think about this, even though it did make me laugh and think I could never do this. This is not. This is not me, anyway. So, which is why I look carefully at what was available and the opportunity came to do a professional doctorate in education. The education department in the particular university was, was was very strong and they were doing this professional doctorate for education. Who was? For anybody. It didn't have to be for for educators, but it was. It was to sort of try to encourage people to think about again higher education is important. So, on, I decided to do it. I got on the program by.

Speaker 2: 34:01

My initial idea was that I was going to look specifically into to educating around spirituality. That that was my, that was my interview pathway, that's what I was thinking of doing. And so there were people on the course who were I'm just trying to think they were engineers, physios, police, you know people from all sorts of professions who were there. Conversation, it was, it were incredible, incredible, and I'm really glad I did that.

Speaker 2: 34:35

I know people poo, poo, professional doctorates. There are people who say they're not, oh, no, no, no, they're not PhDs, no, no. But actually the depth of those conversations and and the process of it was the right one for me because I could, I could, I was just banding with people and and and and discuss, you know, getting that opportunity to really sort of discuss deeply about different things but about different people's walks of life. It was fascinating, absolutely fascinating. So it was a benefit as well to be outside health and outside the department. There were people from health but but not, you know, not people. That was connected with me and it was really good to be able to do that. You get a very different perspective.

Speaker 1: 35:27

It's almost I see it as a natural extension of when you're looking at caring for someone holistically and you are bringing in all those social dimensions of health that you have to cover through. To be able to look at all of those kind of dimensions of health, you need to be able to take in all of the non health staff, the education staff, the government staff. You need to be able to talk to all those types of people as well. So, and yet there is a very big discrepancy against professional doctorates and PhDs and even though they're both level 10, which means their terminal qualifications, they're actually equal. So if you're at, the skills you get and different but also transferable.

Speaker 2: 36:15

Yeah, absolutely yeah, I mean it's about. It is about people. People sort of talk about doctorates as being sort of that's just really good, but but it is about you are training to be a researcher and the research journey. I've listened to a number of your podcasts and hearing other people's stories and and and this, the stories they tell about being lonely. Yeah, that about PhDs are, it's a lonely process that you kind of feel almost abandoned some of the time of. Actually you've got to go from do it yourself.

Speaker 2: 36:55

Yeah, I don't, I don't agree with that. I don't. I don't think in a, in a in a cultural world that we're in, and that that you should be doing things on your own. No, and actually I know other, you know there are some, some places who have have excellent PhD schools where they, you know, set up discussion groups and all those kind of things, working together and supporting, supporting each other. But I know other places, don't know, and I'm, I'm very glad I went down this particular route and there are proff docs for midwifery and there are, you know, all sorts of different ones and I don't see see why they are not the same level. I agree, the amount of work I did, I can tell you.

Speaker 1: 37:42

But they are like, academically they are the same level, they're both level 10. But it's the same as the lower class and even in some cases, an honours is seen as a higher level the masters by coursework. And then you'll kind of sit there and go on as you go straight to PhD and it's like, well, I've got my masters, yeah, but honors is higher. It's like, well, actually, no, it's an undergraduate qualification. The masters is a level higher, whether it's coursework or it's research. You're doing a different focus on it, the skills you come out slightly different, but it's actually still like, yeah, the hierarchy of it all, the expectation of it all, and I think it's because people don't truly understand what's involved in a professional doctorate and the work that's needed for it. It's like, well, I've got my research and I've done this, whereas professional doctorate so you still do it, but you do it in a different manner yeah, absolutely, absolutely right.

Speaker 1: 38:42

Did you stick with that, so sorry? Did you stick with your education of spirituality, or did that end up tweaking a little bit too? It tweaked a lot.

Speaker 2: 38:54

But it was still there. It's still there in it. Yeah, it's still there in it Because I Well, they came, I went to. How did it change? I think it changed during my what's the word? Wait, I can't remember Progression examination, oh yeah, where the professor who was examining me at that time sort of said in a way that it was a bit of a narrow focus.

Speaker 2: 39:27

I keep talking about holistic approach. Why am I not having a holistic approach to this? And I went yeah, I think that that is more. Where I'm trying to get with this Is that spirituality is part of this, but actually I want to be looking further in it and one of the things that I wanted to do was, well, it was also to think about the art and science, particularly of midwifery and what was going on and the, the meanings actually of what was going on in midwifery and what. What did it mean about being a midwife?

Speaker 2: 40:14

So I was at that time I was, I was educating again on a program that was this is this is now very non PC in this country, I'm afraid, but it was about promoting normality, because there had been a concern about about the lack of normal childbirth that was taking place. I still can't believe I'm saying this, but now what's going on? But there was a concern about it, that that the university had created this, this module for qualified midwives who were, who were midwives who had never done a degree before but who were doing the, a top up BS, bsc, bridging course, yeah, yeah, as part of it. So they created this module for promoting normality. It was oversubscribed because the number of people who wanted to do it and the people who came on it were were qualified midwives who had been qualified for at least 15 to 20 years, and it just wanted to do it.

Speaker 2: 41:21

Who had been yeah, who were in this medical model and wanted to go back. They wanted to go back to to actually what the heck are they doing, you know? And so as part of that, I I did a session that was around the art of midwifery practice and included in that I did. Well, if I go back to to my, my teaching of spirituality I've kind of forgotten to say that is that that would use creative methods in order to facilitate discussion with people. So I might. My own personal experience about creativity actually helps you to sit down and think about things a little bit more deeply, and so I was using that in my methods. So in this particular teaching session with the qualified midwives, in getting them to think about the art of midwifery and what it was, then I was using these kind of methods and and it facilitates this professional discussion and the things that came out of it was about spirituality is about about professional practice, about themselves personally, an awful lot of that. And I thought, well, actually I'd like to to interview and to get these particular midwives involved in this, this eddy that I'm doing. So I got the ethical approval to do that and so they became part of my journey of this whole educational doctorate and the the actual thesis itself was looking about.

Speaker 2: 43:09

Well, in my abstract I talk about it midwifery is assumed by many to be, both in art and science, that the term midwife comes from an old English phrase, with women with an expectation of holistic or whole person care, and that that is it. You know that that's what's been expected for generations for midwives, and I was also concerned myself that the education having shifted from being this practical kind of within schools, moving into higher education, midwives had had to adapt their education, their practice, to fit in with the model that was expected in higher education, in institutions, and so a lot of the art of midwifery stuff was being pushed down as a, as a need to to enhance the scientific and the medical model, as you talk about those greater emphasis on the science of midwifery, and I felt that there was an imbalance of what was going on and there was little research out there about addressing what being a midwife actually means to people to have this role and about the art of midwifery. So so that's where it became, became my study and so, as part of this process and because of the way I was being on the edge of everything I didn't.

Speaker 2: 44:47

I was also concerned about qualitative research. I was never going to do something quantitative Sorry folks, but but me and numbers do not fit but qualitative, yeah, definitely I was going to go down the qualitative route. But even even when I looked at qualitative research methods I thought actually what we're doing in qualitative research is we're still fragmenting the people that we are talking to. We are, we are breaking it down into little quotes of something that that is a whole whole six or seven, eight pages of stuff that they've said and you get a little quote that it's kind of broken down into these themes and I thought, no, that's not. I mean people do narrative research. Obviously it's different, I appreciate that.

Speaker 2: 45:39

But? But I was concerned about the fact. You know, I want, I want to somehow recognize these rich, poor, poor midwives, these women who who I was working with as part of this study. They were almost correspondence, you know, they were part of this. I wanted to celebrate them as whole people. And how the heck am I going to do this? And I had, I had wonderful supervisors. They were both educationists. I did not have midwives supervisors, because this was, this was the. I didn't choose them. They were provided for me by the education department. But I think they also chose, chose me Because once they knew what my subject was, they were, had some input to do it.

Speaker 2: 46:35

And I fantastic, fantastic people who, who pushed me, gave me freedom to go down the wacky route of creativity, yeah, and to and looked a lot at some of the art based arts based material and education that was going out at that time People were moving into that and so they, they kind of forced me into it not forced me into it, but allowed me to do it.

Speaker 2: 47:06

And so I looked at methodology, I looked at work, I looked at transformational methodology, I looked at spiritual methodology that was that was around at that time and eventually I realized that what I was doing was totally organic. Yeah, if you had a, had a timeline or a line of quantitative and qualitative at one end of each, you know each end, quantitative, one the other, I was at the farthest possible end of qualitative that you could possibly be and and it ended up being not just an organic study but it ended up being what's going to brookalage. So it was like a patchwork of different aspects. So if you, if you read my thesis, if you look at it, you'll see it goes all over the place, but but also it's very colorful and if you, you know it's hopefully it's written in a way that people can enjoy and read it in in a certain way.

Speaker 1: 48:09

I must have had a flip through, but I did get caught on one chapter, which was your creative creativeness. That came out of it and I kind of wanted to go back and wait. No, this is really cool. I liked reading that organic process of how you used your creativeness.

Speaker 2: 48:28

OK, right, well, that that became, that came. I've always been a creative person. Apart from being wanting to be a nurse from the age of three, my mother would always talk about the fact I'd be sitting on the floor with lots of bits around me making something.

Speaker 1: 48:42

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 48:44

Making a mess quite a lot of the time, but making something, and so that's been an aspect of myself, of the creative side of myself, and, to be honest, over the years it has got suppressed. Having children, not having time, my creativity was coming out in my writing more than than anything else. So a lot of stuff had been left behind. During one of the sessions that we had with the other members of this, of this Eddie, that I was on Periodically, we had to present things to each other. So at this particular session it was quite early on in the process I was talking about this brickolage of different stuff that I had and in order to illustrate it, I'd drawn a patchwork quilt of the different topics, different subjects. That was there and I presented it to it.

Speaker 2: 49:45

The other members of this particular group they were fantastic. We got really well together. They used to laugh at me I mean, for example, the end, you know, and particularly the engineer who was so quantitative he was almost out of the room the other side, he just couldn't get what I was talking about. So when I'd given this presentation, at the end of it he sort of said do you know? He said, jenny, I don't know why you're not making a patchwork quilt as part of this. And it went ah, hold on, let me just think about that, because I'm also the other side of me is. I'm actually quite deeply reflective when somebody has said something like that to me. I do go off and think about it and I let it go.

Speaker 2: 50:28

And actually I suddenly thought you know, I'm asking these midwives in front of me, who are my compatriots, to make things as part of this interview process, as part of this journey with me, but I'm not doing anything myself. So what am I going to do about that? How am I going to face that? So I took what he said seriously and I thought, well, OK, so how can I do this? Never made a patchwork quilt in my life before. Yeah, Done lots of sewing stuff, Never made anything like that. But I thought, well, the only way to do this. And I read some stuff about quilting and about brickolage and Well, that's just research, but yeah.

Speaker 2: 51:12

Yeah, exactly. And then I thought, right, ok, so for every entry of my research diary I then drew a little square which was kind of like an image or of what what that particular entry was about, and they became the squares of patchwork quilt. So I had a central panel which was going to be the title, which I didn't put on to the end, and in fact actually the title of my patchwork quilt is different to the final title, actually, because I'd finished it by the time, but you know that's not going to but the panel in the middle which that was made from my wedding dress, by the way and then the the squares of the quilt go around in a spiral around that central square, because it was being built up from the center. So it's five years of my life, basically, which doesn't just cover the study, it's that it covers what was going on in my life. There were births and deaths and from other people there, you know, there were holidays that I went on, and that's there. You know. There are events, events that took place, and so in fact, it became part of part of my journey and so, therefore, it became part of my, my thesis, and individually for each of those participants.

Speaker 2: 52:51

I also made text quilts I really have got to write these up which which were? And Okay, now trying to explain this, yep, but for each of each of each of them I'd had two interviews. They had all made three different different things, creative things. As part of this Is that I I consolidate it all in a story, sort of like a story for for each of them, and then Went through it and put colours in relation to some of the things that they were talking about, whether they were talking about physical stuff, emotional stuff, spiritual stuff, social, cultural, education each of them had a different colour and they then broke those up into squares, which were then turned into a spiral quilt for each of them. So for them as well, for a printed printed one as well. So how many? And then used as part of the comparison in the study as well.

Speaker 1: 54:10

So how many of them did you make? How many participants did you have?

Speaker 2: 54:14

And I had nine, wow, so yeah, so it was a lot of work and a lot of but it was a lot of exploration of different methodologies and it's not something I've written up. Actually it's in the study, you can see it but it is something that I think. Actually it is something perhaps people could repeat, because it gives you a whole dimension, a different dimension of each of them. Otherwise, because when you put them up on a wall and you compare them with the different colours and the different, you know the different sizes of them, because some of them talk for much longer than others did, or different, you know sections of it you kind of realise that everybody's different.

Speaker 1: 55:03

That's a unique way of providing that pictorial representation of what they say, of who they are and why midwifery is important to them. Yeah, yeah, and we do now picture thousands of words.

Speaker 2: 55:21

Yeah yeah, it's totally multi-dimensional. That's the fact. The realisation that, you know, a midwife is not just a midwife. She has some things that are more important to her, that she is bringing to this.

Speaker 1: 55:37

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 55:39

And it's a very powerful, powerful thing to have done and to have been part of that with them.

Speaker 1: 55:47

So you said that you're a very reflective person and a very creative person throughout your life. So, even though it was part of your work and your doctorate, your thesis, did it also help maintain your sanity when everything else was going around, because you could channel it into multiple needle points that gave you? You have to be mindfulness, because if you're not mindfulness when you're doing a quilt, it very quickly runs away from you having done some quills. So did the art of doing that actually help keep you sane or did it increase your frustration at times?

Speaker 2: 56:31

It kept. It definitely kept me. It kept me focused, yeah, and in fact, actually there's something I think I've written it that it was very noticeable to me that if I was sitting writing on the computer, my kids would be interacting me constantly. They would be coming and you know, yes, I was a bad mother. I was writing stuff when I was looking after my kids. Yeah, you know, but that's been me. They've always known that and I'm not. No, they haven't always known I'm being a bad mother, but I've always been able to switch off a little bit. When there's noise around me, I can get on with it.

Speaker 2: 57:14

But when I was sewing, when I was sitting there quietly sewing, I noticed they ignored me quite a lot of time. Wow, they. Actually. It was almost like I was in a bubble. I felt a lot of the time I was in a bubble and I do find that now as well, that to be able to constant, you know, when things are challenging, I do find I do more sewing. I try, you know. Or knitting Knitting is also good, yeah, but actually it does help to process things quite a bit when you're sitting making it, and I do know an awful lot of midwives out there. Do this, do this creativity in order to help them process what's going on in their lives.

Speaker 1: 58:03

That communal that you get out of midwives who are knitting, who take it with them because it's something that they can do, is great to see.

Speaker 2: 58:11

Yeah, I mean it is, but it's also totally criticised by people. Because it seems unprofessional.

Speaker 2: 58:18

Yeah, yeah, in fact, there was a case that was taken to the NMC a few years ago here because a midwife was sitting knitting during her home birth, I think and she was reported because she was not concentrating on the woman what she was doing. So it's people's perception of it. I mean, midwives have always had this kind of old she's the midwife sitting knitting in the corner, kind of thing and pushed down. And in fact, in 2016, my word, is it really that long ago? I was involved in something called the Knitted Midwives Project here.

Speaker 2: 59:07

Okay, this is going completely off track now, but the health minister that we had at the time was who, I must actually say he's now our Chancellor, alex Jekker, but anyway, he actually made an announcement to say that they were going to bring I think it was. We had a shortage then of 3,500 midwives. Now they say we've got a shortage of 2,500 midwives, so we've really improved. But he was saying something about you know that this government were going to provide all these midwives, and I was having a bit of a Twitter chat with another political friend of mine who said well, I'd like to know how you're going to do that. I mean, do you want us to knit them. And so, of course, from that moment on, she and I started to have a little chat about this and say, right, well, why don't we set up this project and take it to the Royal College of Midwives Conference and knit midwives? And it was huge, I mean, you can Google that as well.

Speaker 1: 1:00:28

It's called the Midwife Project.

Speaker 2: 1:00:31

And we put out, you know, messages to everybody and say would you like to knit a midwife? Because we want to take it. In fact we ended up with about 500, I think of these little dolls I haven't got mine one here yeah, I've got another one, but the one I had actually my friend bought and she puts it on a Christmas tree, everything was appropriate, Absolutely, but anyway, they're about that.

Speaker 2: 1:01:00

Well, I can't sort of about six inches tall, but these little pattern so anyway. But the designs of them that came through were fantastic. We had had grandmothers who were knitting them for their daughters and we had little. We also asked for a little message. We got ethical approval, actually to ask a couple of questions about why they did it, what was it for? The stories behind it were so moving.

Speaker 1: 1:01:26

That sounds like a fabulous PhD in itself.

Speaker 2: 1:01:29

Yeah Well, we've still got all the data and in fact we've just started talking about whether we're going to write it up in the current current thing about what's going on, because we never got round to doing it. That's just magic. It was so interesting and Professor Leslie Page was the president at the time and somebody had made a fantastic one who looked like her, which they put, so he put it at the top of the pile. I wasn't able to go. There were issues going on and I wasn't able to go to the conference. But my colleague did and they put a big display up in the entrance hall of the conference so that you walk in and you see this massive amount of midwives Because we didn't have the whole 3,500,.

Speaker 2: 1:02:16

She had also gone to the British Red Cross or Charity and got a ball of wool that represented all the other midwives that should have been there, which she had got in baskets around as well. It just showed how many midwives were missing. It gives you such, again, another visual representation. We asked the midwives what the impression was we had as part of the research as well, and there were a couple responses that came in, that which said you're bringing the profession into disrepute. Remove it from this immediately. Wow, so I thought where that's come from. I mean, it just shows that this is what some midwives think about this kind of creative, kind of approach.

Speaker 2: 1:03:13

It makes you think, doesn't it?

Speaker 1: 1:03:14

Yeah, there's so much to unpack in that that's a whole different study in itself. Yeah, but it is, I mean. But it also goes to show that the midwives are a representation of the communities that we work in, of the families that we work with, and that there is no one single model of a midwife, that there are as many midwives as you've got. You've got individual models because they're all slightly different because of however they've been brought up, they've been influenced, they've experienced is going to modify how they deem a midwife should be.

Speaker 2: 1:03:51

Exactly so. If you look at the text quilts that I had, that was exactly a picture of that. But then you also think about where we are now in this culture of education for midwives for the future. Is that, what kind of midwives are we going to have? Are we trying to develop with Generation ZX, whatever they are? You know, I came from a background where there were no computers, no mobile phones. Our generation is moving on. We now are moving into this technological world of how can we put across to these young people who have been reliant on their mobile phones, of stepping away from that in order to give that kind of holistic. That is the task for midwifery educators now.

Speaker 1: 1:04:53

I think I know that we've got some fabulous honours students and master's students and I know there are several other studies around looking at the use of social media from the women's point of view and looking at the influence it has on the decision making or their mode of birth, on their level of fear and tocophobia, but also looking at it from the perspective of what do we need to know? We need to know the usage of social media and that's only going to increase because it is the reality we are in now and how do we help women and pregnant people curate what they're seeing, to know that it's credible or not? And we're seeing that whole thing that's not professional. To net, it was deemed that health professionals weren't to go on to social media because it wasn't deemed professional. But we've now got increasing health professionals of the same kind of generations, like millennials or Zs or whatever it is, or even some of us oldies, but are actually going on and doing it now and playing a bit of the original kind of video and going right now.

Speaker 1: 1:06:09

Let me tell you the truth. This is why it's really need to be important and I was watching one today. She is she's an emergency pediatric doctor. She has four kids of herself. She's in her mid to late thirties, I think, and she's really cool and groovy. And she said I'm going to talk to you now about using proper names and it's going to mention a little bit about sexual assault and I'm going to show some books from reproductive health. So that's not your thing.

Speaker 1: 1:06:45

Scroll on over and she says it's really important to teach proper names, because she had a young kid come in and saying, oh, somebody was touching my cookie and it's like, well, how do you know what type of cookie they're referring to? Is it kind of the one that you buy in the shop and they eat, or is it somebody's slang?

Speaker 1: 1:07:04

And so and so yeah, so there's. There's some really cool ones to follow. Now they're trying to counteract that and I think that's going to increase in the future as well. But it is looking at this whole changing world that the women are going to get their information straight on. But we've got a generation who've got Google at their hand but they don't know how to use it properly.

Speaker 2: 1:07:24

Yeah, I agree, and the problem is and it's always been the case because it has been, with books and journals, et cetera, and articles that are out there is how do these young people, these students, these women, know what is safe to look at, where to look at, to guide them you know where are the most appropriate TikToks to look at, who are credible, who are actually giving the right information and not giving information that's wrong.

Speaker 1: 1:07:58

And that's the challenge, because there is so much out there, there is so many influences and content creators that are writing kind of dangerous stuff or stuff will work for them in their specific situation. It doesn't mean it's going to work for anyone else. Anyway, okay, just want to. You talked about kind of being supposedly a bad mum, which I don't necessarily believe. You, if you're studying, working, you've got to juggle everything here. I'm not a bad mum. Did you have kind of the ability to do some of your study during work hours, when you were at work or when the kids were at school, and then try and work around their times, or was it just when time allowed that you were able to do some work?

Speaker 2: 1:08:46

Well, the difficulty. I was part time anyway. I was part time educator, and this is this for anybody who has been a part time anything you end up working outside the hours that you're meant to do anyway. Yeah, education is in a different. You know, higher education is different in a difficult place and it's difficult here in this country as well at the moment, particularly for midwifery. And even then I had fantastic colleagues. They were doing the best, they were trying to be as supportive as they could be, but no, I was not really being.

Speaker 2: 1:09:25

I was giving certain amount of time off to go and do the study. Much of your work has to be done outside hours and by that time I think I had stopped doing the practising midwife as well. But I've always been a night bird. My husband's always been used to the fact that I was working late into the night in order to get stuff done and because I become passionate about things and I'm learning. It's taken me a very long time 40 years of my career to learn that actually I do need to stop and to slow down and to let go of things and not get involved in things which I don't need to anymore. But it was hard, it is hard. It's really hard to do any kind of study if you are in another career. There was one point where I was getting burnt out and they did give me a bit of study leave. That was getting towards the end, which then of course put pressure on my colleagues because they had to pick up my work.

Speaker 1: 1:10:41

Which makes you feel guilty about as well.

Speaker 2: 1:10:44

So, yeah, you get all that process as well. That's going on. It's not easy. No, I had five kids under a certain age. And why did I do it? I looked at that and I go, why, what was it all about? But I did. That's just how you did it. You just get on with it or you stop. You don't complete it, which I know lots of people do that. I find it difficult to not complete things.

Speaker 1: 1:11:24

How did you celebrate? How did you, kind of after, or as all done and you all ordered it and you got to wear. Now do you wear a floppy hat? Oh yeah, excellent. So how did you celebrate getting the floppy hat?

Speaker 2: 1:11:37

Okay, Well, when you first handed in, it was a bit depressing because you kind of handed in and you think, well, now what? They just give you a little slip of paper that says well done, here you are. Thank you for handing it in. Yeah, when I had the actual viva, at the end of the viva my supervisor produced a bottle of something sparkly which we all shared. I was stunned. I thought, oh my goodness, what have I done?

Speaker 1: 1:12:08

It's not. No, it's not what it should be.

Speaker 2: 1:12:12

You mean I've done this. Yeah, actually, yeah. But actually the actual day of celebration, of going to the graduation ceremony, was fantastic. Only my husband was able to come. My parents weren't able to get there. They're very elderly at that time and you walk out it was like a cathedral. And then you walk through into this big marquee which was attached to the building, which had drinks and food and everybody was filling around, and I suddenly looked through the window and I saw my daughters. This is where I'm going to have a bit of a moment. Actually, I saw my daughters only four of them, because the youngest couldn't break out of school, but the others all had and they were standing outside the glass. They were holding up a banner saying congratulations, dr Hall, and I then broke them into the marquee. Hell yeah, absolutely. I have got these photographs of standing there with my amazing daughters with this banner, and that was the celebration. That was the most powerful moment for me.

Speaker 1: 1:13:27

It was all worth it in the end.

Speaker 2: 1:13:29

Yeah, so perhaps I was a good mother, all right.

Speaker 1: 1:13:31

Well, I think you get four out of five, if the fifth one couldn't come because of others. I think you've done pretty well, thank you. I think you've done pretty well, they're still talking to you now. Even better, yeah, they still are. Yeah, so with retirement, now, what are things you are looking forward to? Doing it? Not retiring okay, they're slowing down and picking. Then You're being more picking and choosing of what you're doing. You're putting your energy now. Okay, I'm open to anything.

Speaker 2: 1:14:08

I mean, if something came up and somebody said, come and do this, I would say yeah, okay, I can do this. I'm not giving up yet. And I'm not giving up on midwifery yet. Some of me looks at it at the moment and I think this is just rubbish, really is rubbish.

Speaker 2: 1:14:28

So, which is why I'm sort of still involved in social media, but also the work I'm managing to do connected to what's the midwifery forum yeah, being able to speak out and to write things down that are. You know, I want to write about political types of things, but I think I still have got things to write. I mean, in all this process I've also was involved in writing the midwifery essential series, which was sort of student books which were there were eight of those which are with Helen Baston, which I got involved with. So, and also that, the book that I did with Susan Crowther Professor Strews and Crowther and I listened to her podcast and at the end of it you asked this question of her and she said, well, jenny and I are writing another book and I sat there going, are we?

Speaker 1: 1:15:33

Last to be known, sorry.

Speaker 2: 1:15:36

So I'm calling her out and actually actually we are. We are starting the discussions on it, man, Maybe there may be something else coming on from that, but I do have a number of things to write.

Speaker 1: 1:15:53

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:15:54

And I definitely want to look at. You have inspired me again to look at this thesis and to think actually some of this stuff needs to be discussed in the context of what's going on now and how do I take that forward? So, yeah, that's that's in my head, but there's lots of family stuff that's going on, as you do when you get older, and it's just trying to get that balance of what is priority. You know, what is the most important thing I should be doing, I think.

Speaker 1: 1:16:30

So that's that's still sort of on the cards and I think that having people to write with, as you said, that advantage of having people to talk to when you're doing your, your proff, doc, that collegial spirit or having someone else to bounce ideas off, means that you and Susan can work on it. You can have those conversations when you're off doing other things with the family. She can kind of pull her part and then you come back, she goes, then you work together. So you've got it's not you drugging all the kind of rocks up the hill, it's actually kind of a passing it from one to the other, which makes it a lot easier. So picking the people that you work with is, I think, part of the trick as well.

Speaker 2: 1:17:13

Oh, absolutely I mean. I mean, I mean she inspires me. She has hasn't, you know, like like Mary Renfrew. She has inspired me totally over the years and we've had some very powerful, deep conversations about things and she's also very good at pushing me. Whereas I can sit back and sort of reflect on things for a long period of time, she says no, we've got deadlines.

Speaker 1: 1:17:42

That's a good balance in a relationship. Thank you so much for your time.

Speaker 2: 1:17:48

Thank you so much for yours. I mean, it's been utter privilege to do this and, yes, got my head sort of thinking about so many different things you know about, about actually, where, where do we go from here? Yeah, it's a lot of that, but but I think it's great. What you're doing here is, and you know, to get get all these researchers out there talking is so important because, again, you listen, they are different. There are so many different stories and different pathways and hopefully this will encourage midwives who perhaps got more of a creative bent. Yeah, there are opportunities out there where you can do different things.

Speaker 1: 1:18:29

You know absolutely, and I think that's funding.

Speaker 2: 1:18:32

Well, I know there is no funding. Yeah, oh God.

Speaker 1: 1:18:36

There are creative ways of doing things, yeah, excellent.