"You need really supportive colleagues to survive, and work-life balance is essential. If home is not right, work is not right. Your home life has to be perfect.
"And you need the right practice partner," Rewha said, emphasising what midwives take on for the community is all-consuming.
Rewha recalls pulling out a twin, poorly positioned for birth, with nothing more than a Whangarei-based obstetrician on the phone for guidance, as a career highlight.
She had been unable to move the mother to the hospital, as she was busy birthing the first baby.
"I think it's really important to recognise the work that midwives do - it's constant, it's full-on and they're a long way from help up here," Rewha said.
"They've got to be on their game at every moment because being a midwife in a rural setting can be very stressful."
When grappling with the decision of whether she should venture into the unknown two decades ago, Rewha sought her granddad's wisdom.
He said "if you don't go up there, you don't know what you're going to miss."
It helped that her best friend lived in the area, and so Rewha took the plunge.
"I'm from the Bay of Islands, so I was coming into a whole new community I didn't know," she said.
"The lifestyle, the people, the way of life, it just felt right and I never left.
"The decision to put down roots took two years, then I bought a whare here."
Rewha said she'd never had to look for women as she was the first Māori option for a long time in the area.
"My dream was to have a succession plan and I wanted to mentor midwives to come back home to work so I could step back," Rewha said.
"There were 11 midwives gathered to send me off, most of them working in the community which is great because midwives will never run out of work, that's for sure.
"I'm still mentoring one midwife now, it's been a huge part of my job, keeping them safe in the rural setting and learning to manage the family and keep everyone calm."
When asked why she's retiring, Rewha said she had got to a stage where she was exhausted and felt she had nothing left to give.
"It made me feel like I couldn't do this anymore," she said.
"I still want to impart my knowledge, just in different ways. I'm looking at six months off, just to clear my head."
Although the mandates are not directly responsible for Rewha's departure, she explained that Covid-19 had created many challenges in midwifery and felt it was sad a lot of knowledge was walking out the door due to the recent changes.
According to the New Zealand College of Midwives, the Public Health Response Order for Mandatory Vaccination of Health Workers required midwives to have received their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccination by November 15 and their second by January 1.
Rewha said as a result, midwives who've given most of their lives to Te Taitokerau were now gone.
"We've lost one in Kaitaia, nine others from Kawakawa north, plus a few more in Whangārei which has put a huge stress on the service," she said.
"There are so many rules about who can see Mum, who can touch the baby, who can visit. It's all very controlled. It's a breakdown of whānau, really.
"The first Covid lockdown, we went from hardly any homebirths to heaps."
Although Rewha wholeheartedly supports homebirths with the belief that "birth is a normal process", she notes they're more taxing for midwives, as two are required to be present at all times.
Rewha's first grandchild will be induced this month in Christchurch. Her retirement means Rewha will be able to support her son and his wife in the crucial early days with their baby.
For first-time parents in particular, planning and preparation tends to start and end with the birth.
But anyone who's seen babies born and grow knows this is but a tiny piece of the challenge.
"The aftercare is highly underrated and you need quite a bit of follow-up to help with breastfeeding, recovery, relationships," Rewha said.
"Many, many people get lost in having a baby.
"Although as a midwife I'm sad to see this taonga retire, I'm also excited for her next adventures," Naomi Waldron said. Waldron, a Core midwife at the Kaitaia Maternity Unit, has worked in this tight-knit community of midwives with Rewha for the past decade.
In January, the new grandmother will celebrate her 60th birthday.
"It's been a pleasure servicing this community. I have nothing but respect for the people who live here; they've treated me well and I've enjoyed doing it," Rewha said.
