Dorset midwife’s incredible story

monsoons of Bangladesh. It was very scary.

“There are so many women out there who have it so much worse that, at the time, I felt it was indulgent to say I felt overwhelmed. But I’ve learned since then that with your mental health it’s no good to bury things away.”

Anna said she hit a low point in her early 30s – sofa surfing, drinking too much and having a ‘series of one-night stands’ while seeing her friends getting married and starting families. She said she later had a ‘wake up call’ moving to a Buddhist community for a period while MSF paid for her to have cognitive behavioural therapy.

“It saved my life,” Anna said. “I think whenever you have anxiety you learn to live with it rather than ever making a full recovery.”

Anna returned to Bangladesh to teach the country’s first midwifery course and met and married a Bangladeshi man with whom she conceived her first child.

Sadly, Anna’s unborn daughter suffered a rare brain tumour in the womb. Anna miscarried on what was meant to be her wedding day.

“I really underestimated the depth of that sense of loss,” Anna said. “It was a shock to learn before she was born that my daughter would die of something I hadn’t even heard of or treated before in all my years in midwifery – it seemed additionally cruel.

“I had to give birth to her knowing she would die. I also suffered a bleed after the birth and, this time, a midwife saved my life.

“If I had been in any of the places I had been to with MSF, I would have died.

“I don’t think you ever get over the loss of a child but, having had a breakdown, it taught me a healthy way of dealing with grief.”

Anna, who is now a mum to six-year-old Aisha, has divorced her partner but continues to find purpose in serving the community through her work at Dorset County Hospital. She also spends her free time meditating and sea swimming, which she says ‘helps me keep a form of balance and be a better mum’.

She added: “I wrote most of my book in the lockdown. It started as a mental health exercise, but I realised when I was writing it that it had become a testament to the women I have worked with and my own love of midwifery.”

Frontline Midwife, published by Bloomsbury, is available in hardback and now paperback at independent local book stores, Waterstones and from Amazon.

It is also available as an ebook and audiobook, read by Anna herself, and has previously been selected as one of The Independent’s non-fiction books of the month.