Musings on midwifery

The way I work as a midwife involves having a caseload of women whom I get to know throughout the pregnancy, birth and postnatal period. I am on-call 24 hours a day, six days a week. On the whole, I enjoy working this way. Being on-call and in control of my own diary is great in some respects, as it means I have more control over my work-life balance. The down-side is not being able to visit friends when I am on call unless they live reasonably close by, and the level of sleep-deprivation that sometimes occurs during busy periods.