Olga Cousley loving midwifery even in retirement
Published:Sunday | February 12, 2023 | 1:30 AM
WESTERN BUREAU:
Olga Cousley, a retired community midwife who worked in the field for 41 years, looks back on her tenure with great fondness and wants Jamaica’s current generation of midwives to likewise love the work that they do in serving the women and their families.
“I have to say that, to me, midwifery was very enjoyable. It was hard work, but it was enjoyable, and it was so exciting,” the 77-year-old Cousley, who retired in 2005, told The Sunday Gleaner last week. “I really enjoyed midwifery, even with all the ups and downs it had.”
The role of a midwife involves helping expectant mothers with home or hospital deliveries, providing care for mothers before, during and after they give birth; conducting regular home visits and immunisation of babies; and providing family planning services.
Safety concern
But while midwifery is treated as a time-honoured profession, several of Jamaica’s present-day community midwives have expressed concern for their safety as they travel from one place to another to give home care to expectant mothers at all hours of the day, including traversing rough roads through deep rural communities in the dead of night.
For some, that concern is compounded by their motor vehicle allowance being rolled into and then withdrawn from their regular salary, after the Jamaica Midwives Association (JMA) joined several other unions in signing a public sector wage agreement with the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service last November.
However, Cousley said that security issues were not a major concern for her or her contemporaries during the early 1980s, during which she travelled to various communities in St James at varying times of day to help pregnant mothers, ironically without having a car of her own.
At that time, community midwives or domiciliary midwives were required to reside in the area where they were stationed, though they would often be asked to work at clinics in other locations.
“Goodwill was my area, but I worked in Somerton, Lottery, Adelphi, and Granville, and I was sent to other clinics to assist if the midwife was not available. I had to take public transportation, and it was very difficult, because there were times when there was no vehicle on the road. If I was sent to Lottery, I had to stand on the roadside waiting for public transportation, and then I had to take a drive to Sign and from Sign to Lottery,” Cousley recalled.
“Most of my deliveries were in the evening and in the mornings coming to 3 o’clock, and those were the times when I would get calls. I don’t think my colleagues were that timid to go out, and I was not timid to go out at any hour of the night,” she added. “Whenever the call came, I would just note the time, note who called, and tell whoever was in my house that I was going out, and tell them the person’s name that I was going to. Safety is a concern now, but when I was doing deliveries and working back then, I wasn’t afraid.”
When Cousley did her entrance examination and was subsequently called to serve as a midwife-in-training at the Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) in 1978, she was among western Jamaica’s initial batch of community midwives.
She would later be placed in the level two category of midwifery due to being assigned to work at the community level. Level two midwifery is one of three levels in that category of medical care, with level one midwives working at hospitals, while level three supervise the two lower levels.
Memorable experiences
“We had two years’ training, going to midwifery school, and after one year, you would start going on the ward. Then you would be sent to a midwife in the community to live with her for three months to see how she would operate,” Cousley explained. “During that time, you had to observe the midwife doing a certain number of deliveries, and you, as a student, had to do a certain amount on your own with her supervision.”
One of the retired midwife’s most memorable experiences during her 41-year tenure was when she answered a call late one afternoon to go to Content district, roughly five minutes away by car, to assist a woman who gave birth to triplets.
Cousley had previously referred the expectant mother to the CRH since community midwives are not allowed to deal with multiple births.
“I heard a car come in the yard, and the woman’s consort (boyfriend) called me and said I had to come now … . I said, ‘No, baby. I cannot come because she is a hospital case.’ But we are not allowed to get a call and not go, even if you can’t do the delivery. You have to go as long as you get the call. So I put on back my uniform and went with him,” Cousley told The Sunday Gleaner.
“We went to the house, and I realised that the lady was fully ready to give birth. I didn’t get to put on gloves or a gown, so I delivered the first one barehanded, then I quickly wrapped that one, slipped on gloves and a gown, and delivered the second one,” she added. “After the second one, I figured that was it, so I started paying attention to the babies. Then I heard a splash, and it turned out the mother’s membranes ruptured. I said, ‘That couldn’t be something else’, and by the time I heard the splash, there was the third baby. I delivered them, and all three are alive and are big men now.”
Cousley, who was publicly recognised for her years of service during a Community Guest Day celebration at the Chatham Seventh-day Adventist Church last September, had a gentle word of advice for Jamaica’s current crop of midwives.
“I think there are fewer home visits being done now compared to my time, and I could put that down to being due to the crime situation. I don’t liaise with most midwives who are working now, but I would tell them to love the job, to love the clients, and to put that love above money,” said Cousley.