We're Mother And Daughter Midwives

Sue Spender, 56, had always wanted to be a midwife, but in the end, the inspiration to achieve her dream came from her daughter Hannah

- Karen Evennett

The third of nine children, Hannah Roe grew up seeing midwives come in and out of her house and she was in awe of them.

‘Mum had a baby roughly every two years until I was 16 – so there always seemed to be a friendly face popping in to check on her pregnancy, or support her afterwards,’ remembers Hannah, who is now 31 and married with three children of her own – Maisie, eight, Reuben, five, and Caleb, three.

‘I found the whole process fascinating,’ Hannah says. ‘When Mum was expecting my youngest sibling Aimee, now 15, I even begged her to let me be present at the birth.

‘I didn’t get my wish – but, by that time, I already knew that one day I would be a midwife – and I’d attend plenty of births then.’

Hannah had set her sights on a career in midwifery when she was just 13. And, homeschooled by her mum, she worked at getting the GCSEs and A levels needed for a place on Bournemouth University’s BSc course in Midwifery.

Watching her daughter alternate between blocks of study and stints on the labour ward, Sue Spender couldn’t have been prouder. Not least because becoming a midwife had also been her dream.

‘It was a dream I’d long given up on, having left school without any qualifications, and my report stating I was “incapable of learning”,’ says Sue, from Langport, Somerset. ‘But seeing Hannah work towards her goal made me look again at my options.

‘Since I’d successfully home-educated all my children, I realised I couldn’t be as incapable as my teachers had led me to believe.