Rhu midwife on her 50 years caring for thousands of babies

On Monday, September 3, 1973, Sheena drove her green Vauxhall Viva to Yorkhill hospital.

She had given her cousin and god-daughter, Mandy, her first nurse's uniform when Mandy was just three years old.

Now she was dropping Mandy off to begin nursing training - as the then 17-year-old looked to follow in Sheena's footsteps.

Mandy walked in with a feeling of pride, fear and trepidation - something which didn't change much when she and her classmates were met by the matron and two nursing officers.

"We were quickly informed that we never call each other by our first names," she recalls.

"The amount of information appeared overwhelming and we were told to read the numerous documents that night in our room.

Yorkhill's original hospital entrance (Image: Newsquest)

"We had to stay in the nurses' home in those days and each had a single room with a single chair and desk. The bathroom was shared by many of us.

"We had to be back in the nurses home for 10pm each night with one late night allowed each month to midnight.

"The doors were locked at those times, and if we were late getting in, we were then reported to the matron - and had to go to her office and explain why we were late.

"It gave us good leadership skills. It gave us the tools to move forward in a confident manner, without being overconfident.

"And it taught you that if you didn't know something, not to just go in and do it, but to always ask. Nobody knows everything in any job."

In those days, there was six weeks of training and then you were on the wards, learning your craft hands-on.

When Mandy started, the NHS was only 25 years old, and the former Rhu Primary and Hermitage Academy pupil thought she was done with school.

Instead, she began a lifetime of learning as nursing and neonatal care and midwifery have continued to improve.

Younger babies are showing their remarkable ability to overcome their initial rough starts.

And it's even more remarkable to consider that the first babies in Mandy's care would now be 50 years old, with children or perhaps even grandchildren of their own.

One of Mandy's colleagues has estimated that Mandy could have helped care for a staggering 50,000 babies in the course of her career.

Starting out

Mandy aspired to be like her cousin Sheena from a very young age. But her own mother was less convinced.

"My mum wasn't very encouraging of me going into nursing," she admits.

"She felt I was too soft, that I wouldn't be able to cope with it.

"And she insisted when I was at school that I would do shorthand and typing and work in an office.

"But that wasn't for me. I just always wanted to be a nurse.

"I think I probably have that caring nature, to be fair - I wouldn't even drive past a wee injured sparrow in the street without stopping to help.

"But going into it, you probably don't understand the depth of what you're going to deal with.

"It's every single emotion. You think you're just going to go into it and do something nice for somebody, and make them better.

"But you don't focus on what you've got to do to make this person better, or all the steps you've got to go through."

After her training and her early work as a state enrolled nurse, followed by midwifery training at Stobhill Hospital in Glasgow, Mandy had her first son, Paul, in 1977 and later her second son, Martin.

In 1980, Mandy started working at the neonatal surgical intensive care unit at Yorkhill, in Glasgow's west end, and then, in 2015, moved with the facility to its new home across the Clyde, at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital campus.

Since then, she's been at the special care baby unit, in charge on the nightshift.

The unit takes babies who graduate from intensive care when they're more stable. But they can still be in the unit for days, or even months, depending on their condition and what care they'll need after.

And that's one of the biggest changes Mandy has seen in her time: that babies can now get support at home, not just in hospital.

They can go home with oxygen. Home ventilators are now helping unite families sooner.

Mandy says there has been huge change to help parents be with their children.

Because while babies remain in hospital, some mums are getting trains and buses a couple of times a day so they can be with their child.

"It's a lot of work for them, and it affects the whole family if they've got other children at home as well," she says.

"Everyone really suffers that way.

"Some of these babies are born at 23 weeks and are surviving. When I started, babies born before 28 weeks were considered non-viable.

"But that's the advances we've made. These babies are surviving, and they're surviving well."

Glasgow remains one of the biggest surgical teams in the UK for babies. And for the staff, that means there is a constant need for their attention - and their support.

The emotions in the unit are the most raw there are. Parents are angry, they’re scared, they’re tired. They might cry. They might lash out.

And the staff are caring for those families as well as their tiny babies. They are the ones who stay with the new lives when parents have to go home at night. And then the nurses go home themselves and process the full range of emotions.

Supporting families

Now aged 67, Mandy has been a senior staff nurse for the past 20 years. She's watched the professional changes, the rise in more triplets and even quadruplets coming through the doors.

She has touched tens of thousands of lives. And that's not always easy. What does she do when parents are struggling?

"It's not the baby we look after," she explains. "We're a family-led unit, so we look after the parents, the siblings, the extended family.

"There is sadness in the job, without a doubt. The first thing I do is pull the screens around them, give them privacy and just sit with them, hold them if they want to cry, and just give them time.

"And then I ask them specifically what is bothering them, what can I help you with, and what can we do to help you.

"We encourage mums and dads to be very proactive with the babies. We encourage them to do tube feeds.

"Some of these babies weigh 500 grams - they're tiny, tiny babies, but just to put their hand in and let their baby hold their finger, just to put their hand in and touch their head.

"Years ago they just had to sit there and watch. Not any more, thankfully. That's been a huge change."

Carrying the work with you

Still living in Rhu, retirement for Mandy will mean more time with husband Scott, her sons and her three grandsons - Andrew, Struan and Archie.

"I think I'm probably quite lucky," she says, "in that when I walk out, I leave my work behind.

"I come home, I'm a wife, I'm a mum, I'm a granny.

"There are some cases you come home and you have a cry, or you go over and over it and think what could I have done differently? Have I done the best I can do?

"And then the next day you get up, get on and you go back in with a smile on your face and you get on with it again.

"There's another baby coming in. There's always something else different happening. You just get up and get on with it. And that's just the way I was taught."

Mandy has retired, but not disappeared. She's already done some bank shifts, and is booked in for more in October to help out with the NHS's current chronic shortage of personnel.

But she's still felt a "loss" at no longer doing the three 12-and-a-half hour night shifts every week. She might miss the drive to Glasgow from Rhu less in winter, though.

Humbling

Looking back at 50 years, and thousands of lives, Mandy's voice gets quieter, and she speaks of how humbling that is.

She has a few families with whom she has kept in contact, and watched their children grow up to lead the full lives made possible by the NHS's care. And she's even helped children of babies she once cared for.

"It's lovely to watch their wee ones growing and get bigger and the things that they're doing," she says. "It's really lovely to watch that.

"One in particular, he was an extremely sick wee boy. And he's now in S4.

"To be able to follow these babies from when they were struggling, really fighting for life and now seeing them becoming independent young adults is really lovely, to know that you have had a touch and you think, 'well, I've done some good'.

"I've always done the best I can. And I feel very, very proud to have done 50 years in the NHS, I am honoured."

Mandy Carrington and her godmother Sheena at the old Yorkhill hospital entrance (Image: Newsquest)

Home

On Sunday, September 3, 2023, Mandy returned to Yorkhill where it all began, this time driving godmother Sheena, now aged 87.

The hospital has changed. Mandy and Sheena have changed. To mark 50 years with the NHS and of service was emotional.

"I cannot believe she's retiring," Sheena says in front of the original Yorkhill sign embedded in the sandstone. "I'm very proud."

Mandy told Sheena: “I’ve always said 'you took me up for my first day, you've got to take me home’.”