FROM sheet metal worker, to supermarket employee, to midwife, Mark Smart's career path has proved more unusual than most.

But had the opportunity been available when he left school, Newport-born Mr Smart would have pursued the latter career 25 years earlier.

One of fewer than 150 registered male midwives in the UK, out of more than 30,000, Mr Smart has been involved in the delivery of countless children since he started work as a midwife at the Royal Gwent Hospital in 2005.

But back when he left school in 1978, men were not allowed to train as midwives in the UK, and an aspiration that first took root as a child had to be shelved.

"It would have been 1966 and the birth of my brother. Home deliveries were more common in those days, and I was very interested," said Mr Smart.

"I would only have been four or five, and I remember my mum shouting, and me asking my dad why, and he said she had a bad headache. It went from there really!"

His preferred career path blocked, Mr Smart took a very different route, into an apprenticeship as a sheet metal worker. In the mid-1980s he was made redundant and after talking to a friend, took a job at the former KwikSave distribution depot in Newport.

That "stopgap" job lasted 15 years. Meanwhile, the door had opened for men to train and work as midwives, though few were taking that path.

"The government experimented a little with the idea in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and when men were first allowed to pursue it as a career there were restrictions on how they could work, but these were gradually dropped," said Mr Smart.

In 1998, whilst on holiday, Mr Smart's wife Charlotte showed him a newspaper article on a male midwife in London. It rekindled his interest but, married and with a baby coming, it was a big step to consider.

"I was 37 but I looked into it, and was lucky to be able to take redundancy from my job, so I went on an access course and into nurse training in 2000," said Mr Smart.

"My daughter (Sarah, now 14) being born was another trigger, and my wife was great, she encouraged me to go for it.

"After nursing for a while I went into midwifery training. I did my practical training mainly at the Royal Gwent, though a lot of it was university-based.

"I was the first male midwife at the hospital, and I'm the only one now."

 

MR Smart said that while some women are surprised at seeing a male midwife, he has encountered little in the way of resistance.

"When I was a student nurse and mentioned it to lecturers, a couple of the old school ones raised an eyebrow," he said.

"But among the women it's been a very positive experience. You have to respect religious and cultural issues, but that is the same often for women midwives.

"And if pregnancies are classed as high risk, the women are used to seeing a lot of men around, doctors and the like, so I'm perhaps not seen as that unusual.

"You need to be a people person in this profession, and trust is key too, because women and their partners are relying on us to give them the information they need to make an informed choice about their care."

Having waited 25 years from leaving school to beginning his midwifery training, Mr Smart has no doubt he made the right decision to follow his earliest career instincts.

"When I was at school, I was fascinated by the idea of being a midwife, but I couldn't do it," he said.

"I've always had a real passion for it, and that has stayed with me into this job. I know I made the right decision and I think I'm very lucky."