Hard pushed : a midwife's story / Leah Hazard.

Where it begins -- Notes on bowling balls, and other birth stories: Student midwife hazard -- She's doing it -- Notes on women who 'shouldn't' be pregnant: Eleanor -- Defying the odds -- Notes on children having children: Crystal -- twenty-three weeks and three days -- Notes on paper pants and broken dreams: Olivia -- Mother knows best -- Notes on triage: Hawa -- Word medicine and the pee baby -- Notes on getting it wrong: Tina -- flu season and fear -- Notes on being from somewhere else: Pei Hsuan -- I have carried this story -- Notes on baby brain: Jaspreet -- Too many hours in the day -- Notes on the uniform: Star -- Meeting the enemy -- Notes on death: The sound -- Notes on obstructed labour: Leaving my post -- Going home and finding the way back -- The cavalry.

Leah Hazard's work in the maternity wards of the NHS frontline is more extreme than you could ever imagine. From the bloody to the beautiful, from moments of utter vulnerability to remarkable displays of strength, from camaraderie to raw desperation, from heart-wrenching grief to the pure, perfect joy of a new-born baby, Leah has seen it all. Through her eyes, we meet Eleanor, whose wife is a walking miracle of modern medicine, their baby a feat of reproductive science; Crystal, pregnant at just fifteen, the precarious, flickering life within her threatening to come far too soon; Mrs Bhatti, a Bangladeshi lady who insists that Leah simply must write her own elaborate thank-you card; and Pei Hsuan, who has travelled hundreds of miles to somehow find herself at the open door of Leah's ward. Moving, compassionate and intensely candid, Hard Pushed is a love letter to new mothers and to Leah's fellow midwives there for us at the most challenging, empowering and defining moments of our lives.