Trying not to let the bastards grind me down

Well, this has been a challenging week. Of my current team of four midwives: Debbie is on long-term sick with a dodgy knee, unable to walk without crutches, and is awaiting surgery; Sophie is building up her hours again after being on long-term sick after some heavy duty surgery but is on two weeks annual leave at the moment; Karen only joined up 4 weeks ago but has had 1 week on annual leave and this past week has been on the Trust Induction programme (this is what you do when the infusion pump makes this horrible noise/this is how you give someone a blood transfusion without killing them/this is what you do when you suspect someone is beating their child to a pulp/when someone threatens to kill you this is who you call. All thrilling stuff) so I've been all alone this week. This basically means being on-call 24/7 for all four caseloads.

I spoke to my manager and explained I'd be on my own and asked if I could get some help with the routine daytime work so I could concentrate on on-calls and emergencies. I was told that everyone was too busy so, basically, no. The previous week I had walked in on a member of another team- let's call her 'Rita' - slagging me off for always asking for help*, so my avenues were becoming rather blocked. I managed to rearrange most of my work till the following week and get 2 immovable visits covered, would just have to do the rest when I could.

Then the carnage begun. On Sunday, my car had broken down (overheating) so on the Monday, as well as helping my mum get up to Kings Cross so she could take the train home to Yorkshire, I need to limp it over to the garage to be repaired. As a result, I couldn't do a booking that afternoon and, as no one else would cover it either, poor hopalong Debbie took a taxi in to the hospital to do it for me. I spent the day fielding calls from one of Debbie's women who was in early labour. I returned from Kings Cross to find my car had been issued with a parking ticket, despite being parked perfectly legally**. I was called in later to look after the labouring woman, who had a nice waterbirth at 5am. The birth centre (midwifery-led, low-risk unit) was jammed though and my friend Nia, who was all alone there, had a birth which had a few complications so I was helping out. Labour ward (consultant-led, high risk unit) was also packed and I somehow ended up having a HUGE stand-up in-your-face shouting match with one of the co-ordinators from there, who was unbelievably rude to me and acting like a child. I got a call at 8am from one of my girls to say her waters had broken and I finally left the hospital at about 10.30am to go round and see her. I knew I had to hand my phone to someone as she may well labour during the day but, after catching Rita (who would have been the first choice to call) slagging me off, wanted reassurance from my manager first I was doing the right thing. I called her, only to have her have a go at me, saying that of course my colleague should be covering me, she didn't know why I was calling her, I should be able to deal with this. I cried for about half an hour. I then got a call to say my car was ready to be collected so when I got home I caught a bus which took an hour after going all round the houses and dropped me half an hour's walk from the garage. I got there to find it had cost £150 and I'd been blocked in by a van. I ended up shouting at a perfectly friendly man and crying hysterically all the way home. Finally got to bed at 3pm but woke again 3 hours later.

Got called back in that night to look after the girl whose waters had broken. She was only in very early labour but she had lots of family with her who were being a nightmare and refusing to take her home. I ended up being there with them all night till 9am, before we persuaded them that at 1cm, she really needed to be at home. I then went and found the (very scary) labour ward manager, who had been complaining about me starting this row with the co-ordinator the previous night by throwing my weight around and making demands (completely untrue), so I did my best to calmly sort out the disagreement. Called Rita to take my phone for the day only to be told she'd spoken to our manager the previous evening who had said that of course they shouldn't be covering my work and that if I was off, my phone should be covered by the hospital. This completely contradicted what I'd been told the previous morning and what I'd been shouted at for even questioning. My manager of course hadn't thought to let me know this new piece information however. I left around 10am.

Got woken at 3.3opm by the birth centre saying my woman was back in and they were too busy to take her so could I come in and look after her? Errrmmmm....no actually. I explained that if they couldn't take her, she should go to the labour ward (fate worse than death in my book but I had no option). I then spent the rest of the afternoon worrying about her.

Came back in to labour ward at 10pm to take over. Her care had been somewhat shambolic but I managed to pull this back in order. The whole family were exhausted, having been awake for nigh on 72 hours, even though we'd all made it perfectly clear for the previous couple of days that she wasn't yet in active labour and the best thing they could ALL do was to get some rest, but instead the poor girl had had 4 people standing round staring at her for the whole time. No wonder the labour took so bloody long to establish. It took every ounce of my strength to remain the very epitome of calm and supportive to every last one of them. This notwithstanding, her tired and stressed mother - who kept telling me she'd had 5 children and really should have known better - ended up shouting at me that she "didn't care about the baby!" and I can't tell you how close I came to walking out. I didn't though and, despite the best efforts of the doctors and her family to interfere, she had a nice normal birth at 4am. The mother immediately backtracked and said I'd been "very brave and very patient". Managed to do a quick turnaround with the paperwork and left around 6.30am. Got to bed at 7.15am and then up again at 12pm, racing into London to meet my cousin Camilla who was over from Denmark for a couple of days and was leaving that night so only had that time to catch up. Came back from London to go to the opening night of the new Gourmet Burger Kitchen in Walton, which was guest list only and I practically fell asleep in my (free and delicious) burger. Come 8pm I was supposed to come back on call but realised I was not fit to look after a flea. Called a lovely colleague on the birth centre who agreed to take my phone that evening. Went home and slept - aaaaaaaahhhhhhhzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Next morning I found out that my girl had gone into the high dependency unit over night with breathing difficulties, which turned out to be nothing, but if my phone had been on I'd undoubtedly have been called in. I spend the day running around trying to sort her out and fit in all the visits I hadn't been able to do all week, before heading into London to go to a friend's Hen night at The Sanctuary and FINALLY TURNING MY PHONE OFF FOR THE WEEKEND.

It might amuse you to know that, to add insult to injury, I had just finished writing this when my computer decided, for reasons best known to itself, to delete it all and I had to write it all out again.

Anyway, I can quite honestly say that if I wasn't leaving in August, I'd have handed in my notice this week. It's one thing working hard and feeling tired all the time, but quite another to have to deal with a face-full of abuse from all and sundry at the same time. Sometimes I really hate my job.

*Unsurprisingly, since I've not had a full team of six for a YEAR now and for the past 6 months have been running the team with a maximum of 3 and often only 2 midwives. What does she expect me to do?
**I appealed, supplying lots of photos as support and had an email on Friday saying it had been issued in error and had been cancelled. Finally, some good news.