The Midwives

Make Me a Midwife (1x2)

Air date: Aug 07, 2012

Follow three trainees at St Mary's Hospital, Manchester, as they embark on the daunting task of learning to become a midwife.They have to clock up 40 births under supervision. Then suddenly they are on their own with no one to turn to. Chloe's only just left school. Jess is about to do her terrifying first shift since qualifying. And Aurelie is in danger of failing the course. As fragile new life begins, we expect them to look after us and our babies, but there's only so much a trainee can learn from a text book. In this film they swap rubber babies and the lecture theatre for the hospital frontline and high-risk pregnancies to find out if they've really got what it takes to be a midwife. 18-year-old Chloe is a first year student midwife starting her placement on the high-risk delivery unit. She's only just done her A -levels and moved out of home, but she's wide-eyed with enthusiasm about the wonders of childbirth and the challenge of exhausted, fed up mums. It's not long before she faces the more nerve-wracking and intimate milestones of her first vaginal examination and 'catching' her first baby at a caesarean section. 20-year-old Aurelie is struggling in her 2nd year and has one more chance to pass a vital assessment. If she fails it's unlikely she will ever become a midwife. Her mentor Leslie scrutinises Aurelie's work for a week before making the decision to pass or fail her. Aurelie's dream of returning to the Congo to be a midwife is in danger of ending. Jess, at 22, has just completed her three years training. On her first shift in the blue uniform of a qualified midwife, she realises that the buck now stops with her. In the life and death dramas she encounters, her decisions are now her responsibility alone. More than anything, Jess wants her first normal birth as a qualified midwife. But on the high-risk delivery unit of St Mary's Hospital, it's unlikely to be a straightforward one.