The Midwives

This film follows the midwives on the Central Delivery Unit at Saint Mary's Hospital in Manchester - one of the busiest labour wards in the country. Midwife Gill mans the triage desk, assessing the women who demand to be admitted. She has to decide who's in labour: who to admit and who to send home. Midwife Ann looks after Carren and Barry whose baby has not been moving. They've returned to give birth at St Mary's after losing their newborn a year ago. Charlotte's been on the induction ward waiting for a bed to come free, for 29 hours, before midwife Gill helps her deliver her baby. This film shows what it's like for midwives to care for families at the most special time of their lives, whilst dealing with the unpredictability of birth and the pressures of the NHS. It's a high-risk unit and the midwives never know what's coming next: which delivery will be straightforward, and which will be terrifying.

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.

This film explores the wildly contrasting experiences of the community midwives who look after mums on the two opposite sides of the Wirral near Liverpool. The Wirral is a peninsula, divided in half by a motorway. On the west are million-pound houses, on the east are some of the most deprived areas in the country. There is a 15-year difference in life expectancy between some areas of the east and west Wirral. In the middle is Arrowe Park Hospital. From here the community midwives venture out in their cars to look after the mums on both sides, before and after they have their babies. Often just 10 minutes' drive from each other, the mums of the Wirral can be polar opposites in wealth, age and expectations. So, for the midwives, their job can be very different according to which side of the motorway they work. On one side, they are trying to help a family who cannot afford a cooker for their home, on the other they are trying to keep up with the latest in hypno-birthing. In Birkenhead, in the east, midwife Katie is cheerfully dealing with a mix of teen mums, deprivation and social service cases. In the west, midwife Jan sees more anxious, older professional mothers, who are keen to have everything done to plan. Whilst Katie is tracking down absent mums or visiting a mother whose newborn has been taken into care, Jan is running oversubscribed antenatal classes full of anxious mums and preparing to work alongside a privately hired birth partner, or doula. Through the midwives, the film follows the pregnancies and births of some very different mums, including 18-year-old Rachael who feels worryingly ambivalent about her accidental pregnancy and Sally, a professional older mum with a very detailed plan for the perfect homebirth. Which of the two sides presents the greatest challenge for the midwives? And are things always so black and white? Some mums do not conform to expectations and there are some things about having a baby that are true wherever you c

Meet Saint Mary's specialist midwives who help mums and dads through pregnancies that are high-risk, endangering the baby or putting the mothers health under threat.

A look at the midwives of Wirral Women and Children's Hospital, near Liverpool. Each of the 26 single rooms on the ward will present the midwives with a different problem. They see a mix of antenatal and postnatal patients. This means medically high risk mums waiting to have their baby may be staying in the room next door to anxious first time parents. As the midwives are stretched by the complex needs of parents and a busy ward, the film shows four new mums becoming parents in very different circumstances. Staying on the ward is a waiting game for some pregnant mums. Claire has been brought into hospital due to health complications and is desperately hoping not to have her baby ten weeks prematurely. Others like first-time mum Holly are sick of being pregnant and desperate for the baby to be induced. On the same ward are new mums shell-shocked by the double trauma of a difficult labour and a new baby, and a fifth-time mum looking for relative peace and quiet as she gets to know her new baby.

Joyce is concerned about Fizah because of her complicated family background. Farhana has to help a woman give birth in her own front room. Midwife Di's mum has gone missing.