Midwife

Video transcript

"What I like most about my job is the feeling I get when I help a mother become a mother. Being the first person to touch a newborn child is a miracle.

My name is Margaret Martin. I’m a student Midwife and I work mainly in the Perth metro area. My job is looking after women during pregnancy and when they have their babies and after they have their babies.

I never finished high school so I had to do a tertiary entrance program to get into university. I started my Bachelor of Midwifery. It’s a three year degree. I’m on ABSTUDY. I’m also a recipient of the Rotary Health Scholarship for Indigenous students and that definitely helps out.

With more Aboriginal Midwives in the system, we’ll have more culturally-sensitive care and we can lower these bad statistics that Aboriginal women seem to have for child birth.

I had a woman who came down from the Kimberley. I knew her family. She had a very complex pregnancy and she was telling the doctor to go away in her language, and I knew what she was saying and she was pushing him away and I said to her, Sister listen, we need you to stop. We need you to do this for us, so we can save your life. I believe that my bond with her made a difference to her and made a difference to her baby.

My future is a very big future. I really want to start an Aboriginal birth centre where women can come and have their classes, have their care and they can feel comfortable, they’re in a culturally-appropriate sensitive place where this is all women for women’s business."