Barb reflects on a lifetime’s devotion to nursing

And 1975 also witnessed a very young 18-year-old Barb Bachelor walk through the front door of the Northern District School of Nursing at Bendigo — and a career in midwifery was, literally, born.

A career which would initially see her splitting time and training between her Echuca home and hospital and the big smoke down the road in Bendigo.

After qualifying, Barb headed overseas on a quick around-the-world trip and then returned to work at Prince Henry’s Hospital in Melbourne and completed her midwifery training at the Queen Victoria Medical Centre.

Her travels continued, taking her as far afield as Cairns Base Hospital, where she spent a couple of years, then back to the Percy St Medical Centre and ERH in Echuca and, oh, yes, and Rochester too (when they had births there).

But Barb says midwifery became her calling very early in her career — before it was even officially a career.

“It started during my hospital-based training as a nurse at Echuca District Hospital, after I had a positive experience while doing placement on the old Rose Baker Wing maternity ward, where I got to work with some inspiring midwives,” Barb recalls.

“Those midwives had a passion which, for me, would become almost a calling,” she says.

Barb says she was realistic enough to know her life as a nurse would have a use-by date, compounded by her total lack of interest in permanently moving to Melbourne to live and work.

But midwifery, well that was a very different kettle of nursing care which soon became the be all and end all — although while being a midwife was her future, being a country nurse meant you had to be prepared to care for all age groups and conditions.

Looking back on almost half a century in nursing, Barb says there have been many memorable experiences, some which will stick with her forever — for the best and the worst of reasons.

While for many, many more, you “simply deal with them and move on”.

Sometimes the hardest part of the job she loved was how you explained it to those who rarely, if ever, went behind the doors of the maternity wards.

“People are always saying to us ‘you must have the best job in the world, sitting around nursing and cuddling babies’,” Barb says.

“With absolutely no idea of the stresses and responsibilities which come with the role; the countless hours, eventually years, of training and the ongoing education (in Barb’s case that included a Masters of Midwifery when in her 40s) as systems and methodology change,” she says.

“Obviously it is a remarkable, wonderful moment to see the joy on the faces of new parents as their child is born.

“But it isn’t always the fairy story, and then it is simply devastating, devastating for everyone involved, and while those are the stories you don’t share, they are as much a part of the job and you have to learn to cope with it.”

Sometimes, too, the good memories can last a lifetime, such as Barb being part of the emergency birth of an Echuca baby at just 23 weeks.

Often this is an emergency which is not going to end well. Babies born after only 23 or 24 weeks are so small and fragile they often do not survive. Their lungs, hearts and brains are simply not ready for them to live outside the womb without intensive medical treatment.

“But against all the odds this child did not just survive, the child is doing very well, and as this was a local rural family I knew them and I still receive regular updates from grandma,” Barb smiles.

“There have also been the more unusual occasions, such as the time I was working in Cairns and a young mother-to-be expecting twins came by boat from a remote coastal area in the Daintree, about 100km north,

“She arrived in the middle of the night, and both babies were safely born very soon after.

“The next day I found mum on the side of the bed, breast feeding both babies as the most natural thing to do and soon after all three of them were back in the boat and headed north.

“Working in rural hospitals, over the years I have been involved in a number of twin births, but women expecting more than twins were always sent to tertiary hospitals, as are multiple births these days.”

So, no triplets or quads, but if you stack up the expectant mums, Barb can recall the day she took part in quasi-quins when five babies were born to five mothers in one shift on one day in Echuca.

Then there was the woman who arrived in labour and worried this one did not feel like her previous children — and she was right.

Barb says on examination once her waters broke, staff realised she was facing a breech birth.

“These days that would be an immediate caesarean section but right there and then we had no time for anything and fortunately it all went well.”

But for Barb, as she prepares to bow out, some of the best things about midwifery circa 2023 are the things once routine but which now are just fading memories.

Such as — and this was always one of her personal bugbears — giving an enema to mothers often arriving in advanced labour.

“A lot of things in midwifery have changed, have evolved, but for mine that small decision is one of the most significant, and thank goodness it was stopped many years ago,” Barb added.

“Another big one is we no longer clamp and cut the umbilical cord as soon as the baby is born, instead we now wait until the cord stops pulsating. This allows the baby to have the blood cells,” she says.

“But I would have to say the most important thing overall is the research being done into foetal surveillance, which is being passed onto all midwives and obstetric doctors.”

Nursing, in general, and midwifery in particular, according to Barb, will give you many challenging moments.

She says every day when you arrive at work, you have absolutely no idea what the day will eventually bring.

“Midwifery is much more than just attending births; it involves antenatal and postnatal care of mother and baby as well. Care and support of the mother and baby is so important, having a baby for the first time is so overwhelming for all involved,” she explains.

“Working at Echuca Regional Health, being a rural hospital, means we also take in a large regional area, so the Echuca maternity ward not only services maternity clients, it also cares for paediatrics, medical and surgical patients,” Barb says describing medical multitasking.

“I have had had a wonderful 48 years in nursing, and especially as a midwife, and it is so reassuring for me to see so many nurses are still choosing to continue dedicating their careers to caring for mothers to be.

“New fields are developing in midwifery all the time, to care for the mothers, babies and families, which is so important and reassuring to the community.”

Sadly, Barb concedes, she never really kept count of the number of births in which she was actually involved, but reckons it would be well into the hundreds, with the last as emotional and amazing as the first.

And let’s be fair, when you have a track record that impressive, it’s probably only fair for Barb to take a very well-earned break and pass on the swaddling cloth to the next generation of midwives — and mothers.