From the time Marie-ann Quin was a toddler she was drawn to mums and babies, in fact, she says her first word, apparently, was “baby”.
If she ever went missing from her home in Gisborne where she was born, raised and went to school, her mother would find her in the home of a new baby.
She continued to have the desire and focus to work with mums and babies, but the one-year course of direct entry midwifery had been phased out by then.
After completing her nurse training course she left her home town. She was accepted to do hospital-based nursing training at Waikato Hospital at the age of 16.
After becoming a registered nurse and marrying, she moved to Rotorua with her husband where she was mostly working in the community still pursuing the dream of working with mothers and babies.
Over the next few years, between the births of her three daughters, she worked as a district nurse, Public Health nurse, and did shift work in the post and antenatal wards in Waikato Hospital.
Marie-ann then trained as a Plunket nurse, working in the Te Awamutu and Waipā area until she realised her dream of training as a midwife in 1990.
“My midwifery course at the then Waikato Polytechnic was in the year when there were huge changes in midwifery and midwives were then legally allowed to work autonomously and fully care for women who had no risk factors in their pregnancy, labour, delivery or postnatally.”
She officially, “yet reluctantly” retired in March this year.
“Midwifery is a passion and a vocation rather than a career. The joy I experience being a part of a family welcoming a new member is one of the most awesome, positive and uplifting gifts in life and I had the honour of sharing that with the whole whānau. I have conducted over 1200 deliveries and cared for many more mothers and babies both ante and postnatally,” says Marie-ann.
In her independent midwifery career, spanning 33 years, she covered a large rural and urban area right out to Kāwhia, Ōtorohanga, Arapuni, Te Awamutu, Cambridge and occasionally Hamilton. Matariki Birthing Unit was mostly her base.
In the last 10 years of her career she started working as a locum, stepping into other midwives’ caseloads in the Waikato, Waipā, King country and Taumarunui, then as far south as Timaru, west to Taranaki and east to the Hawke’s Bay and Palmerston North.
Marie-ann’s interest in writing was ignited when midwives celebrated 100 years of registration in 2006. She had taken creative writing courses and researched the history of midwifery in New Zealand.
She also took a course on interviewing at the Alexander Turnbull Library and captured some stories from local midwives who had owned private birthing centres around Te Awamutu, some who had immigrated to New Zealand from England and worked with her as a student at Campbell Johnston Maternity in Hamilton.
She even had a chance to meet and interview a woman whose parents had conducted births in the traditional Māori way, up the East Coast from Gisborne around a century ago.
“I gathered photos and midwifery paraphernalia from different people after an article in the Te Awamutu Courier. These I used in my Ballad of Midwifery Powerpoint presentation which I had written for the centennial celebration. In one of my long locum periods in Timaru, about five years ago, I started writing my first book in earnest,” says Marie-ann.
She thought that all the material she had gathered from trips to Schledgweig Holstein in Northern Germany and Southern Ireland where other ancestors hailed from would make up one book.
“I was surprised that I had reached 200 pages with just the settler stage. I realised there were more books waiting to be written. When I had a spare moment and went back to my writing, I read back two pages and lo and behold, there was the story of the birth almost word for word, already on the pages, the setting was just 180 years in the past. How did that happen?” says Marie-ann.
Marie-ann adds that “writing the book has been a hugely satisfying project. I had no idea of the enormity of the task, I wonder if I would have taken it on if I had.”
Along the way she had friends and family step up and willingly help her with the task. One daughter, Kat Quin-Gemmell, who is an author/illustrator, illustrated the cover, guided her through the self-publish pathway and helped set up her website.
Two midwife colleagues and youngest daughter Laura helped with midwifery and cultural aspects of the book and a friend from Northern Germany, who has studied Plattdeutsch, helped her with the intricacies of that dialect of German.
Some of the other families of the settlers who arrived in Nelson on the same ship as her ancestors from North Germany gave her permission to use their stories.
A friend from Ireland offered to format the book after his NZ partner corrected the Irish vernacular.
“My cousin, who is an emeritus professor of linguistics, also helped with the final edit of the formated book and wrote a review.
“I also had a ‘cartel’ of followers who have followed my journey along the way, some from book clubs, some midwifery colleagues, some friends and some who have randomly joined along the way, for which I am extremely grateful,” says Marie-ann.
Marie-ann will be launching her new book, Emerald to Pounamu - a Midwife’s Odyssey, on Friday, May 5, on International Midwife’s Day, in Te Awamutu Paper Plus at 10.30am.
The novel is about two Irish sisters, Bedelia and Veronica, who move to New Zealand through a settlement scheme in the 1840s/50s after losing everything in Ireland.
The book begins with their journey on board the ship, where Bedelia attends her first birth. The story introduces various characters who have an impact on the sisters’ lives.
Marie-ann Quin's new book. Photo / Supplied
Part one of the book covers the sisters’ journey on board the ship, with four stopovers along the way.
The chapters include descriptive passages of the adventures they encounter. There are several incidents of birth and death on the ship, which creates tension, crises, and high points. Bedelia’s past life in Ireland is recalled during and after critical events, highlighting her development as a midwife in terms of character, knowledge, and confidence.
Part two of the story covers the immigration and challenges the sisters encounter and is woven into geographical and historical facts of the area they settle in, the history of midwifery at that time and many life, death, medical and birth events Bedelia is involved in.
The novel introduces German settlers and a mother/daughter midwifery partnership who invite Bedelia into their practice in New Zealand.
Bedelia learns valuable skills in saving the lives of mothers and babies during a challenging time. Through their shared experiences in birth events, the lives of the midwives become intertwined. Bedelia also works alongside the ship’s doctor, who sees and encourages her gift and potential as a midwife in a growing community.
The tension rises as the culture and expectations of women of the time impact her desire to cultivate her vocation as a midwife and her ideas of marriage. The book leaves room for another book, with plenty of scope to continue the story.
