Trust, now that’s quite an important aspect of my job. Obviously it’s good if the woman trusts her midwife, she will feel safe in her hands but it does need to be a two-way thing for the partnership to work well. I’m not naive, if a woman tells me that she smokes 5 cigarettes a day I generally take it with a pinch of salt, especially if my room smells like an ash-tray when she leaves the room. I’m not going to condemn her, I just make sure that she understands the implications for her baby’s health and knows there is a service which can help her. When I visit and the woman says that the breastfeeding is going well, but I can see the bottle at the side of the sofa, I say that I’ve seen the bottle and, after seeing if help with breastfeeding would be accepted, I ask if she knows about sterilising bottles and making-up feeds. There will always be little ‘white lies’ but I hope that as the woman gets to know me, and realises that I’m there as a resource and not judge and jury, she will be open about things so we can work together.
Today I had my trust abused and I’m really, really p****d off. K phoned me on Saturday and told me that she was having problems getting an appointment to see me and had been told to phone on the day to see if there were any cancellations. I was surprised that my clinic was full as there had only been 2 women booked in when I looked last Tuesday but as my clinics have been busy recently I accepted what I was being told. Now, K is rhesus negative so is receiving anti-D and, as she is now 34 weeks, her 2nd dose is due so I felt that I should make time to see her at home. I now believed that clinic was full so I didn’t want to see her that day as it would already be hectic so I offered her a home visit today, she said that would be great but could we make it late afternoon as she was working. Feeling magnanimous I said that I would be round at 4.30, I officially finish at 4.30 but, as I said, I was feeling magnanimous, not any more though. Silly, silly K had obviously not thought things through as I needed to pick up her anti-D from the surgery before I went to her house. When I got to the surgery I looked up my clinic appointments in case there was anything I could preempt and prepare for, well I was totally unprepared for what I saw, an appointments list with 5 empty spaces. I checked with the receptionists whether there had been any cancellations, no. I asked if anyone had phoned for an appointment and been told that they would have to wait for a cancellation, no. I fumed. I was, and am angry out of all proportion to the deception but I trusted K and she used that to manipulate me. As I ranted, quietly, one of the partners suggested that I phone K, tell her that I was otherwise engaged and point out that, luckily, there were free appointments so she could come and see me at clinic tomorrow. I did phone her but it went straight through to mailbox so………..I left a message giving her the good news about the availability of appointments. Yes, I lied. Has it helped? Not really as I don’t like liars.
