What I wish I knew before starting midwifery

In this video, Louisa shares what she wishes she could tell her past self about midwifery!

Topics covered in this video

0.00 Introduction - what I wish I knew before starting midwifery

0.51 ‘The second year slump’

1.57 Working with mentors can be difficult

3.18 Essays during placement

4.39 You’ll have bad days

5.40 It can be draining

Watch more by Louisa

0.00 Introduction - what I wish I knew before starting midwifery

Hey guys, welcome back to my channel being Louisa!

So today's video is sponsored by Nurses.co.uk. Nurses.co.uk is an online website where you can get all things nursing from job posts to blog posts and their midwifery section, which is expanding with us!

Today's video, I'm revisiting what I wish I knew before starting midwifery - so, I uploaded this video originally back in December, so it was the 18th of December 2018 I uploaded this the first video, now I'm revisiting it.

There are two things that are the same and the rest are different, so let's get onto this!

So, I'm now at the end of second year and I feel like I have a different perspective of what I wish I'd known when starting first year, simply because of second year, if that makes any sense.

0.51 ‘The second year slump’

Number one is I wish I knew about the second year slump before starting first year, like I knew about like you know putting on weight in the first year because of American TV shows, like they call it the ‘freshman 15’.

But I never knew about the second year slump, which is usually when things get really hard you like want to quit, you're like ‘I can't do this’, like it just gets too much.

So it's real and it's scary and it's crazy but I wish I knew about this, just so I could be better prepared.

Like, I find I was like ‘oh I'm fine’ because a lot of people said it happens around Christmas, however the way my course is set up at my uni because we don't have any essays or exams or like, you only had to do with your assessments in placement that's it, so like you know when you get the signed off for each patient area and that's it, we didn't have any uni essays or uni exams or anything like that, so it wasn't really stressful around Christmas, so we don't get hit around Christmas.

A lot of us got it more the second half of the year, so it's like from the new year down to now, a lot of people have got it around here. I wish I knew about the second year slump, basically!

1.57 Working with mentors can be difficult

Number two is working with a range of mentors can be difficult.

So this is kind of being basically reworded from last time but this is different because I've had this experience.

I've been very blessed with who I work with like my first chunk of placement which was on a post-natal ward, I had a lot of different mentors because my mentor had to be off sick quite a bit so I like was working with a whole bunch of different people, but I was lucky because they were all so lovely and a lot of them were kind of new-ish.

It's really nice and I started to like post-natal ward.

Then labor and birth, I was so lucky I had one mentor the whole time I think I might have worked with one other person but otherwise - and also when I did my random shifts before my labor and birth placement I worked with other people - but otherwise I was so lucky.

I worked with one person except for one time I worked with someone who I'd worked with last year so it was fine, I loved it and I was spoilt! I’d just gotten into a routine and so I was just so used to doing that, I was so spoilt, then I go into my next placement block and it was it was different.

Like working with someone different was a lot for me and it was weird, I think I just got too attached to my labor and birth mentor but also it was just a different.

3.18 Essays during placement

Number three now - this one is so obvious but I guess in first year it didn't happen in this way so I was fine, but I wish I knew that I would have essays to do during placement times.

So obviously I knew I’d do essays because, like, it's a degree and I knew there was gonna be exams because it's a degree.

But last year we had, like it was spaced out really well.

We had, like, uni time and then we had study leave and then we had that like exam or essay due, so you usually had quite a while off placement to like get back into that mode.

This year we didn't, like one of our essays, we had just done like a four week placement block, a week of uni and a week of study leave and it was due then.

To me, that's not enough time and I know you're supposed to start your essay way before anyway, so yes partially it was my fault, but I don't like to do work when I'm on placement.

When I’m on placement I just want to focus on placement and I want to do it. If I do research on to be for placement not for an essay.

Like I did try this year, I brought books with me, for my research I printed out the research paper and used highlighters pens, I was highlighting, underlining, making notes, I was doing all that but writing the actual essay I was not doing until I had time off, so it was really hard.

So pre-warning guys, sometimes your essay/assignments will be due in a week after you've just been on a big long placement block!

4.39 You’ll have bad days

Thing number four - you will have bad days, like it's a given, that's just - it's gonna happen, and yeah, it's horrible.

You have a bad day but it's okay, like it's actually okay to have a bad day, like have a bad week if you have to, like just allow yourself that day off to have that bad day and then pick yourself back up and get moving.

Hopefully you have a good support system you can talk to and who can help you out, if not your university will definitely have like counselors available or whatever because sometimes you just need to talk something out.

Or you can go to your personal tutors too, if you’re close to your personal tutors or whoever, like your CPF so your clinical placement facilitators you can go to them and talk it out if it happens in clinical time. Just know there's a lot of resources out there you just kind of gotta look a little bit and they can help you out, because it's okay to have a bad day, it just sucks when it leads on to like a bad week and you haven’t been able to talk to anybody about it.

So definitely go and talk to people about that!

5.40 It can be draining

And last but not least is thing number five.

Midwifery can be draining, and now I said this last time but I feel like I didn't articulate myself well last time when I was saying this and I think I'm not going to do again well this time either!

But my friend told me this one was like, I agree because I said this last time.

Basically it can be emotionally draining, however, the highs outweigh the lows.

Yes, it can be emotionally draining.

You can just feel just so tired and like, ‘oh my gosh this is a lot’ ‘I feel overwhelmed’ or ‘oh my gosh this was so annoying, I can’t believe happened’ or someone did this or someone spoke to me this way, but there are going to be a lot more highs than there are lows, and you just remember all those good times when you're in a bad time.

So that can bring you up and give you hope that like it's gonna get better, it's gonna get better.

So yeah, just stick in there and remember all the good times!

I hope this video was interesting, I hope you liked it.

Don't forget to check out Nurses.co.uk, and until next time keep on being you!

If you liked this video give it a thumbs up, comment down below any questions or suggestions, and don't forget to subscribe to get weekly updates!

Watch more by Louisa

• My favourite parts of being a student midwife

• Best and worst midwifery placement experiences

• Do men make good midwives?

• Browse more videos by Louisa

Like this article? Subscribe to The Nurses Weekly!