DURING a 40-year career as a midwife Margaret Wilson was responsible for countless East Lancashire people arriving safely in the world.

Now she has backed the area’s new birthing centres as a return to the successful practices of earlier times.

When Margaret, now 81, was a resident community midwife in Oswaldtwistle and Darwen in the 1950s and 60s, most women gave birth at home, or in their nearest ‘maternity home,’ similar to the new centres.

East Lancashire’s first birth centre has just opened at Park Lee Road, Blackburn, and the Burnley and Rawtenstall centres will open soon, offering one-to-one care from community midwives who will also offer home births.

Margaret said the NHS was going back to some of the older ways, ‘making birth a normal process again’. In the old days, if the maternity home was too far to travel, people gave birth at home.

Margaret said: “We only had what would now be thought of as the most basic equipment, plus gas and air for pain relief. There was no such thing as an ultrasound scan. We had to do a lot of things by intuition.

“There was one lady when I knew straight away something was not right. Out came this tiny baby. She was far too big for just this little thing and I knew then there was another on its way. I wrapped them up and took mother and babies to the hospital in my van, but they were all fine.”

In the last decade of her career she was head of community midwifery at Queen’s Park Hospital, Blackburn.

Margaret says the most important skill was to build up a trusting relationship with every woman she cared for.

She said: “Now we’re going to have the best of both worlds, with mothers in control and given close support somewhere they feel comfortable, backed up by modern, hi-tech hospital and ambulance services.”

How the new system works

NEW birth centres will give mums home-from-home facilities in Blackburn, Burnley and Rawtenstall, and midwives say the new system will give mothers supportive, stress-free environments.

From the end of 2010, women with uncomplicated pregnancies will be able to choose to have their babies at their local birth centre, at home, or in the £32m Lancashire Women and Newborn Centre at Burnley General Hospital.

Wherever possible, the same midwife will support a mother throughout her pregnancy.

Communal gardens and kitchens mean women will be able to support one another, or remain in hotel-style rooms for privacy.