Midwifery and Long Playing Records

Here is a beautiful and true story, told by a retired midwife remembering the time when her family lived on an outback station. Her roles were wife, mother of young ones and the station nurse.

One evening, one of the girl workers on the station went into labour. It was a week before she was sheduled to travel to the hospital. The nurse found herself in a crisis of commitment. Her children were fed, but there was no one about to watch them while she attended the birth.

Her creative resourcefulness won out and she placed a stack of six LP's on their record player. Each record was of songs and stories for children. The children loved these times when the records played and they were delighted to see their mother prepare a stack of six. They all sat quietly and listened while their mother hurried off to the sick-bay building.

At a certain time during the labour, the nurse was able to dash back to her children and turn the records over to play the other sides of them. The labour went well and the baby was born safely. Everything went remarkably well with the children too. They did not realise what their mother had been up to. They had thought she had wanted to lavish them more than usual that night before bed.