'I saved babies on the front line - but I lost my own firstborn'
New UK|May 23, 2022
NHS midwife Anna Kent's life was changed by her humanitarian work. Here, the 41-year-old - who lives in Weymouth with daughter Aisha, six - opens up about helping others and suffering her own tragedy
ANNA KENT
'I saved babies on the front line - but I lost my own firstborn'

'It's 2007 in South Sudan. A 16-year-old girl named Grace* is whisked to theatre. She has just delivered triplets naturally - something almost unheard of in the UK. Her thin legs stick outwards as I shuffle alongside, my fist in her birth canal to stop her bleeding to death.

An hour later, Grace emerges from surgery after a complete hysterectomy. I watch her walk home in the blistering 50°C heat with a basket of woolly hatted triplets balanced on her head. She'll never bear children again.

I saved Grace and her babies - but I can't save them all.

I remember being a small child in the 1980s and watching in shock as TV footage showed starving Ethiopians. It was the first time I realised how much suffering there was in the world. Then, when I was 18, my brother's girlfriend was murdered. I was a nursing student-young, scared, and traumatised. I hadn't been able to help her, but through nursing I was determined to help other vulnerable women and make a difference.

Eight years later, with a master's degree in nursing and three years of experience as an emergency department nurse at Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham, I flew to conflict-torn South Sudan with the humanitarian medical group Médecins Sans Frontières.

The first patient I saw was a woman with dull and waxy skin, her eyes rolling back in their sockets. Her unborn baby had died and we had to get it out, or she would die too. I never knew whether she survived.

I had a boyfriend back home called Jack. We wanted to build a life together but when I returned, I wasn't the same bright-eyed Anna he'd left at the airport. I had nightmares and flashbacks of dead mums and babies. I was a shell of the old me and the relationship ended. I threw myself into a midwifery course and agreed to travel again. All I knew was that I needed to carry on helping these women.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May 23, 2022 من New UK.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May 23, 2022 من New UK.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

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