www.abc.net.au

There’s been an awful lot of pregnancy and child birth related posting on the blog of late but today’s post isn’t all about me for a change.

 

Have you had a chance to catch an episode of The Midwives on the ABC? It’s on Thursday nights. Produced by the BBC, it is a six part documentary that tells the stories of midwives working in the NHS funded hospitals of the Manchester area.

 

The Beeb (can I even call it that as an Australian?) do a superior documentary. It must be something to do with the sense of responsibility that comes with having your production budget coming from your fellow citizens and taxpayers. You have an inherent sense of wanting to do the right thing by them in terms of the quality of entertainment you create. I think the same is true of our ABC.

 

The Midwives offers a unique point of view of the childbirth experience. Mothers and the journey their babies take to join them are peripheral to the narrative of this series. Instead, the drama is driven by their care providers – their wry insights, their unflappable calm and their empathy with their patients who come from a wide cross section of the community. Each episode focuses on a different hospital within the health service and also explores a different theme that is central to life as a midwife in the present time – managing bed occupancy pressures on the ward and community based midwifery are the subjects of two recent episodes.

 

The producers of this series did a fantastic job of simply letting the midwives’ thoughts and opinions shape each espiode. Their off the cuff comments add humour and at times poignancy to each sensitively produced episode.