Oh baby, what a record.
One of Huddersfield Royal Infirmary’s first midwives has retired.
And Avril Lock is retiring after an amazing 51 years in the NHS and delivering many thousands of babies.
The first baby she delivered is now a granddad and she still remains in contact with him, although he lives overseas.
Avril, from Brockholes, was recruited at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary in 1967 after starting as a general nurse trainee in Darlington in 1962.
She became a midwifery sister in 1970 and worked in several specialities.
Avril, a mum of a grown-up son and a daughter, said: “I have had a wonderful career. Lots of highs and occasionally, some very sad lows.
“My family have supported me throughout as has my work ‘family’ when I was co-ordinator on LDRP (Labour, Delivery, Recovery and Postpartum) and in recent years on Ward 9 at Calderdale Royal Hospital.
“They have been brilliant people to work with and meant the world to me.”
She recalls how giving birth has changed down the years, how it went from being regarded as a “normal” event, then became medicalised in the 70s, with the trend currently going back to being a “normal” event again.
In the early days she recalls having to use roadside phones to call for ambulances in remote rural areas in the pre-mobile phone era and was once forced to use the inside tube of a toilet roll to listen to a baby’s heartbeat in an emergency.
Consultants and midwives now have much closer relationships with mums and their families, she says.
“We listen to women now. We don’t tell them. We give them choices and we have dialogue.
“The consultants are more approachable than they used to be and, as teams on maternity wards and in the community, we work closely with our mums and their families.
“It is all about our patients at the end of the day, though midwives need the feel-good factor as well.”
Colleagues held a tea-party at Calderdale Royal in Halifax to say a fond farewell.
She added: “I know I am leaving midwifery in very capable hands for the future.”
She was voted Midwife of the Year in a people’s poll to celebrate Midwives’ Day earlier this year for accompanying a mum on a transfer, even though her shift was long-finished.
Janet Powell, acting assistant divisional director of Children and Families Division of the Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Avril trained in 1962 and 51 years later she is still here delivering the excellent care for our mums that she always done.
“She has never wound down and just, quite simply, been the professional midwife she has always been.”
