It has been nearly 40 years since Andrew Symon became the first male midwife in Fife, in his words, “by accident”.
After leaving high school with no career prospects in 1979, he became a porter in a maternity clinic in London, where he “basically just did whatever needed to be done”.
And it was here that the midwives took the teenager under their wing.
The 62-year-old recalls: “The midwives would say, ‘oh, come and see this – this is interesting’.
“I witnessed lots of births.
“I really don’t think it would happen today – there’s much more respect and privacy for women in labour.
“But I’m afraid it wasn’t the case in 1979, when lots of people and gangs of students were invited to witness babies being born.
“But the upshot of it was that I saw an awful lot of what the midwives were doing – and I thought it was fascinating.”
Andrew decided to become a midwife.
Men had only been permitted to train in the profession following the Sex Discrimination Act of 1976, which aimed to give women more opportunities to enter the workforce.
Andrew enrolled at Forth Valley Midwifery School in Stirling – one of two experimental training programmes in the UK which were accepting male applicants.
He was one of two men in his class of 12.
“There had been a steady trickle of men coming through before me.”
Becoming the first male midwife in Fife
“So in a sense, the ice had been broken by them coming along and showing that they could do it and that it was acceptable – that it wasn’t going to offend people.”
But he went on to break new ground in Fife – where he became the first male midwife after accepting a job at the now-closed Forth Park Hospital in Kirkcaldy.
It was a little different to his childhood dream of becoming a footballer.
How did Andrew’s family react when he told them his plans?
“They were surprised because it is a surprising thing to do – because it’s unusual,” he says.
“But once they realised that I was serious about it and committed to it, and I showed that I could do it, then, yes, they were very supportive.”
And it was certainly no flash in the pan.
Since then, he has worked in hospitals across Scotland and abroad, completed a PhD on clinical negligence litigation and published multiple papers on maternity care.
He joined Dundee University as a midwifery educator and researcher in 2001 and is now a senior lecturer in its school of health sciences.
The dad-of-two, who lives in Perth, has even turned his hand to writing children’s fiction and is the author of the popular fantasy Shian Quest Trilogy.
He recently published his fourth children’s novel, Columba’s Travels, which shares the adventures of the revered monk and his missionary companions as they spread the gospel across Scotland.
Midwifery will ‘always be female-dominated’
Less than 1% of registered midwives in the UK are men.
Andrew does not see this changing any time soon.
He says: “It’s very female-dominated – that’s never going to change.
“The number of men in it is always going to be a very small minority.
“But the ones who do it, do it because they care and they really want to do it.
“You’ve really got to want to do it completely.”
This is why he doesn’t believe there will ever be any kind of “push” to encourage men to train as midwives. “The men who are interested in it will seek it out”.
While the majority of patients have met Andrew with surprised acceptance over the years – there have been three occasions where mothers have refused to accept his care.
“But in all three cases, it was before they’d met me,” Andrew says. “It wasn’t personal.
“They come in and said they didn’t want to have any male attendants, whether doctors or midwives.
“That’s their prerogative – I don’t have any problem with that.”
In fact, he thinks it is a good thing that more and more women feel confident in asking for the care they want.
Midwifery is ‘not all happy smiling babies’
When I ask what he loves about being a midwife, he lights up.
“Being present at a birth is one of the greatest privileges you can ever have.
“To see a family start or to grow and to be able to help in that process is very rewarding.
“There’s just a warm glow about that. It’s wonderful.”
But he warns prospective midwives that it’s not all “happy smiling babies” as many TV shows like to portray.
“That is most of it – but not all of it.
“So you have to have the emotional resilience to deal with the really bad bits. Because when it’s bad, it can be very bad.”
The job has also enabled him to travel the world. Just last month, he was in Hong Kong to speak at a midwifery conference.
Perhaps most importantly, it is also to thank for meeting his wife.
He was introduced to Maggie, a medical student, while working in a small mission hospital north of Nairobi in Kenya.
They married in 1992 and went on to have two boys, James, 30 and David, 28.
Reflecting on his career, Andrew says: “I was chatting to my older sister just a few weeks ago, and she was saying how she was so pleased that I’d stuck to my guns, even when people said, ‘No, no, no, you’re wrong, do something different’.
“She said: ‘But you knew it was the right decision.’
“And that’s the case. It was the right decision. And it’s been so rewarding.”
- You can buy Andrew Symon’s newest children’s book, Columba’s Travels: The Seven Sands of Iona, on Amazon.
Conversation