Pontefract midwife’s long service award

Emma Reevell will receive a long service award from the Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust next month. The 45-year-old has been delivering babies in the region since 1992.

She began her career at the old Pontefract School of Nursing in 1989, but can trace her roots into the profession back even further.

She said: “I volunteered at an old people’s home in Derbyshire when I was 12, making beds and cups of tea for patients. I was the oldest of three children and when it came to presents mine was always a nurse’s outfit.”

She started work at Pontefract Hospital’s Midwife-led Unit in 2012, after working in the community around Castleford and Normanton.

She said: “The biggest change I’ve seen in maternity is that it has become more woman-driven. There’s more choice and women are in control of the birth experience.”

The mum-of-two is studying a Masters Degree in Midwifery at Huddersfield University with a view to progressing even farther in the profession, and says she was always destined for a public service career, given that her dad was an RAF medic, her mum an armed services midwife and her cousin Simon is MP for Dewsbury.

Emma will receive her long service award in April. She added: It is still a privilege to be at every birth and when they cease to be special then I know it will be time to leave.”