Teesdale community midwife delivers a fond farewell

A COMMUNITY midwife who helped deliver more than 200 babies has hung up her uniform.

Staindrop’s Katrina Wailes officially retired on Monday (April 3) after more than 30 years in nursing. The 52-year-old spent 12 years helping mothers up and down the dale when she was based at the Richardson Hospital.
Mrs Wailes said: “Geographically it’s been wonderful – although you can be in Bishop Auckland one minute and beyond Forest-in-Teesdale the same day.
“We covered 450 square miles with six GP practices. The other midwives had experience of home births but I hadn’t – I was in awe of it.”
The mother-of-three, originally from South Side, began her nursing training in 1983 before she moved into midwifery in 1989.
After a spell in Bishop Auckland, she moved back to Teesdale and worked alongside three other midwives between June 2001 and October
2013.
She added: “I am in awe of babies – if a day comes where you are not keen on looking at babies and parents then you probably shouldn’t be a midwife. When you look at parents’ faces when they’ve got that baby in their arms it’s just wonderful.”
Negotiating the dale’s weather and countless farm tracks often meant some tricky journeys for the dale’s four-strong midwife team.
Working for more than a decade also allowed Mrs Wailes to track some of Teesdale’s natal traits.
She added: “We ended up with an extremely high home birth rate well above the national average.
“More people in upper Teesdale have tended to have higher mental health problems but we have got a higher rate of breast feeding.”
Mrs Wailes helped deliver about 200 babies in her career – a quarter of which were home births. She revealed how she’d seen a lot of change in her time and marvelled at some television portrayals of her job.
“There’s a lot more paperwork now – I love how on Call the Midwife you never see them write any paperwork,” she added.
“It does detract from the job unfortunately but I like seeing how people react and take on board what you say.”
Mrs Wailes said she would still be doing the occasional shift but had taken early retirement to spend more time with her family.
In a tribute to her fellow midwives, she wore her original 1980s uniform on her final day – complete with the belt her mum bought for her.
When it came to the future of midwifery, she was confident the profession would endure.
Mrs Wailes added: “I think it will take some time before the role of the midwife is eroded in this country.
“I think I’m very lucky – I’ve not been free of stressful moments and, yes, it can be quite anxious. But people are still having babies and we have a lot more focus on women in the community.
“If we can do that, hopefully we can avoid mothers being in hospital too long.”