AFTER more than 40 years as a midwife in Newport, Jenny Westwood has long since lost count of the number of babies she has helped bring into the world - and now she is saying goodbye to the profession.

In a career in the NHS which began straight from school in the late 1960s, she has been a guiding hand for thousands of mothers-to-be having their babies at the Royal Gwent Hospital.

But one of the UK's longest serving midwives says she got into the profession only because a friend wanted to do the training, and wanted Miss Westwood to do the course with her.

"She didn't go into midwifery in the end, but I stayed with it - I loved it," she said.

"I started as a 17-year-old on September 9 1968, as what was then called a pre-nurse, in outpatients at the Royal Gwent. I started training the following year and apart from a year at St Woolos this is where I've worked.

"I've had the honour of working with some very experienced and talented midwives, obstetricians and nurses."

Miss Westwood has also seen great changes in the way midwifery and maternity services have developed, and she played a major role - as senior midwifery manager - in the development of the Royal Gwent's current maternity facilities, including its main delivery unit, which opened three years ago at a cost of £3.7 million.

"In the 1970s it was a very prescriptive service. Things have changed a great deal, but the thing with midwifery is that it is led very much by the social climate of the day," said Miss Westwood, who lives in Newport.

"I think we have been, and continue to be, very progressive at the Royal Gwent in the services available to women. This unit is a great example of that. It is my pride and joy."

Midwife has delivered generations of babies

MISS Westwood said she loves the challenge of a busy unit that deals with a lot of higher risk labours, and of handling the variety of cases coming in.

And though the number of labours she has overseen is too great to count, she has been a midwife long enough to have dealt with women from two or three generations of the same family.

"Back last year I delivered a lady and I had delivered one or two of her other children, and not long afterwards I helped her daughter deliver," she said.

"When you're out and about, it's nice to see people whose labours you have been involved with, and that happens quite often."