My name is Angeline, I’m a midwife.

Costco is very close to me, so I’ll go and get some scones. Normally I finish work at 4:35. The ward is less busy then. We take that moment where we go to the staff room, make another cup of tea – everybody’s favourite mug – have these luxurious scones from Costco, warm them up, butter them, we all relax, sit down, have a cup of tea as a team, just appreciating the hard work that the girls would have done, which has been lovely.

It’s only 15 minutes, but that 15 minutes of heaven, that scone, brightened people so much – and some people were expecting them: 

‘Oh, what happened to the scones today?’

‘Oh, I wasn’t able to, the queue, the queue was so much. I’m so sorry. The queue was so much I couldn’t make it.’ 

‘Oh, okay. I understand. But definitely tomorrow, I’ll bring some.’

On the ninth of March, I had a meeting with my Head of Midwifery, and in that meeting I was coughing and coughing. And then I started having this really bad headache. And then I said, ‘No, something is not right here’. So after I had completed that self-isolating, when I went back to work it really hit me so much that things had really completely changed. 

You have to wear your PPE at all times. We use a different entrance for entering the hospital. You have got security guards waiting by the door. You cannot enter without an ID. As you enter you have to wash your hands, put your mask on. That’s two metres distance, say. And I was like, wow, this is really, really, really serious. 

And then it was also frightening for the ladies, because you’ve come to give birth to your baby. And the next thing, you have to wear a mask. You could see that there was fear amongst the ladies as well. The protocol is, when it came in to have your baby before the pandemic, you bring two of your own choice birthing partners. So they will stay with you during your labour – support you. 

But because of the pandemic – only one person in labour.

So I think it was difficult for the ladies to make a decision. One of the ladies was telling me about her own experience of childbirth. And she was saying, ‘You know what, was really difficult because I didn’t know who to choose. I had my mother, I had my partner. I listen to my mother a lot and I knew that when my mum is there with me in labour, she will motivate me and I will go to the extra extreme of doing whatever she wants me to do. And I wanted my partner as well because he is the father of my baby. And I wanted him to have that experience, being our first baby. But it was really difficult for me to decide.’ 

So I said, ‘So what did you do then?’

She said ‘I had to toss a coin’.

So I said ‘Really?’

She said ‘Yeah, to try and make it fair”.

‘So we tossed the coin and, guess what? My mum was the one who was with me during the labour’. So that’s made me realise that – you know what? Emotionally, it’s been a bit of a challenging period for the ladies. 

After the birth of their baby the partners will leave and then they’ll do their goodbyes and then the mums will come to the postnatal wards. Normally, when they had their partners, they’ll leave those curtains pulled up so that their privacy and dignity is maintained, but during this time, because it was only moms, they are talking to one another. They are sharing information to one another. The curtains are opened and sometimes, because they’re feeling lonely, they want to speak to somebody. The pandemic has brought good things and negative things as well. So you find out that two ladies, three ladies will be sitting there, holding their babies, breastfeeding. And you’re like, wow, I’ve never seen this in a very long time. The only time I’ve seen this is in Africa, where maybe moms are all in church or somewhere and they’re all feeding and they’ll just group up together and feed, which was really amazing.

When the clappings started, when on Thursday you find out that we’re gathering together, like it is a harvest where, you know, when you’re harvesting in a field, you all work together. So everybody will be saying ‘Ohh’, raising their hands and waving at you, and passing kisses through the air. 

The first time, I was at home, and my kids said ‘Mummy, Mummy, they are clapping for you.’

I said, ‘Oh, they’re clapping for everybody who works in the NHS.’ 

They said ‘Mummy, you also work in the NHS’. 

So it felt really, really special. 

In terms of teamwork, it pulled everybody together. If I say everybody, I’m talking from the doctors, to the cleaners, to the pharmacists, to the anaesthetist. Not only that, even the managers in the office, they will come, ‘Do you want me to do anything? Okay, I can see you guys are really working hard. Have you got a cup of tea?’ because they could see that the amount of team work. And it also brought people to realise that, you know what, this should have been happening all the time, and we want to continue this. 

Most of the time is happy moments, glorious moments, especially for first-time mums. Wow. It’s beautiful moments because, oh god, they’ll say ‘Oh my god, I thought I only needed to push only once. Do I need to continue pushing and pushing, how come baby’s not coming?’. 

We’ll have more babies, hopefully with good names though. Because, you know where I come from, they name their children according to what is happening at that particular time. So Zimbabwean names are very interesting, because you have Faith; you have Patience; you have Happiness; you have Loveness. So I guarantee you somewhere someone will be named Covid or something. 

But we’ll wait and see. I’m looking forward to those unique names.