Delight of seeing a new life

POLOKWANE – “All births are special, and it is wonderful whenever a mother returns to show us the child when they are older,” says sister Patricia “Pat” Kgomokaboye (48), a midwife at Mediclinic Limpopo.

She is the mother of three children aged 23, 18 and 13.

“I love my work and the best thing about my work is being in the delivery room, seeing new life and feeling excited about the new life,” she says.

Pat studied midwifery, community and psychiatry at the former Groothoek College of Nursing from 1986 to 1999.

Her job entails looking after pregnant women, delivering babies and looking after the newborns.

She says she remembers a birth when she was still a student, where she just wanted to cuddle the baby and not give it to the mother.

“The worst thing about my job is when you deliver a baby and the baby has abnormalities and needs to stay at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), or when there’s no heartbeat and the mother has to give birth to a stillborn baby. That’s terrible,” she says.

Pat says sometimes a mother goes into labour and they call a doctor, but the baby is born before the doctor can get to the hospital.

“Then the doctor only checks to see if the baby and the mother are fine,” she says.

She says Mediclinic Limpopo only offers a choice between a normal birth and a Caesarean section. “We don’t offer options such as a water birth yet.”

Her advice to future midwives? “Being a midwife is very special. You are the first person the baby comes into contact with. You see the mother is in pain, but in five to 10 minutes, that pain is gone and there is only joy.”