DITL: Maternity Forum Conference, NAA Interview and Reflux Training!

Another day in the life vlog this week, and once again Midwifery related but not in terms of my course!

Click here to watch the vlog or see below.
I woke up bright and early on a lovely hot summer's day. Despite the heat, I had a few little tasks here and there to do so I ended up staying indoors and multi-tasking for the first few hours. After watching the opening two lectures at the Northern Midwifery and Maternity Forum Conference, I was more excited than ever. There was a really interesting one from a University of Nottingham obstetrician and gynaecologist, who focused on overcoming the media biases and inaccuracies in reports of pregnancy and covid-19. I found it really eye-opening and interesting.
Due to different commitments throughout the day, I ended up having to tune into the conference throughout the day. I started by watching the conference in my summer dress and having a bacon sandwich. To end the first of my sessions, there was a very interesting vaccine lecture by David Green. I think we, as practitioners, often overlook the impact of some of our “small” aspects of care. He explained there was a less than 50% uptake of influenza vaccine in pregnancy despite significant risk, so clearly, more is needed to improve this, especially between 16-32 weeks when the vaccine is most effective.
Then came time for my interview. The Nottingham Advantage Award is an additional optional qualification that students at the University of Nottingham can participate in, in order to gain accreditation for extracurricular activities. It's supposedly a free employability scheme that helps you prepare for the job market, however that didn't really apply in my case. Each year, they also award a number of additional awards to further recognise student's effort and after my application, I got shortlisted for the Collaboration Award sponsored by Save the Children.

I quickly got changed into my interview dress which was relatively cheap and very last minute from Amazon. I only ended up wearing it for about an hour and I probably wouldn't necessarily recommend it. I was really pretty and very comfy but very thin and also slid-y which meant I kept slipping off the bed!

I wasn't actually nervous at all before the interview, until they were late and then I started to get more and more worked up. I didn't do as much work and preparation as I wanted to, but I knew the topic and I knew Save the Children prior to the award so I knew I would be fine and hopefully my passion would speak for itself.

In the end, the interview was fine. The interview panel was lovely to speak to and really engaged. There were a lot of technical difficulties and so despite that, I still seemed to stay relaxed and hopefully professional, and I even had a question of myself to ask at the end! I can't wait to hear back.
For the last outfit change of the day - crazy for me! - I put on my NMA President top for one last official video recording. To celebrate the World Health Organisation's 2020 Year of the Nurse and Midwife, I'd organised for both the Chief Nursing Officer for England, Ruth May, and the Chief Midwifery Officer for England, Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent, alongside some surprise bonus guests with Jess Read and Sascha Wells-Monro. I was so honoured and thankful to all of them, including their teams for getting involved and all the support. I did include a little clip in the vlog, but you can watch the full message here.

Anyway, we ended up having a little bit of a problem the day before in terms of getting the video over to me. So I had to re-record some of my clips to adjust to the new message, which was fine, it just meant I had to re-record, re-edit and re-upload a little last minute. Luckily, it was only 30 minutes late so wasn't a huge deal. Of course, once wearing the top, I didn't want to change out it for a third time so...I didn't! I ended up enjoying the rest of the conference from the outdoor table because the weather was so lovely and I borrowed my dad's laptop because my laptop dies in minutes of being unplugged.
The M+MF are sharing all the lectures that were live in online recordings, but I thought I'd share some of my personal highlights from the conference, other than the previous two already mentioned. It was lovely to hear Anna Byrom express gratefulness for student midwives and talk about the adaptability of many across the country over this period, especially with recent comments from politicians. GBS is always a really interesting topic to me and something that’s becoming more and more important as I get further along in my studies. Chris Binnie from Beyond Bea spoke as one of the sponsors and even though this is my third time hearing from him, I learn something new everytime I hear from him. Today’s was to validate families as midwives about re-approaching topics and changing their minds!
 Something that's always hard to remember as a practicing midwife is that we truly can advocate for women and their families. I loved that there was a community midwife that pushed to make her idea a reality, to fight for holistic care for clients, with free antenatal yoga. Finally, possibly my highlight, was the final invited speakers who talked about, despite all the negatives associated with covid-19, the positives that have come from this awful pandemic. There was a very interesting discussion in regards to breast feeding rates. I was quite shocked to hear they’ve increased over covid-19 but of course, with no visitors, there is more time to bond, relax and initiate. Also, perhaps more education to families of immunological benefits.

Overall, the conference really was amazing, super enjoyable and one of the best educative days I have for a long time. It was very informative, eye-opening and gave me lots of food for thought. Also, studying from the garden was the best!
After saying goodbye to the speakers and having a pizza for tea, I came inside to watch the lecture that I had missed from earlier in the day, whilst doing the interview. It didn't really add a whole lot to my understanding so it was a bit of a waste of time sadly but then I got ready for my baby reflux training with The Baby Reflux training. You can read more about the training here soon.
My brain was completely and utterly frazzled by the end of the day. Learning from 9am to 10pm, with very little as a break is hard!

Overall, it was another beautiful DITL of a student midwife, doing midwifery related things all day but without doing anything related to the degree. I've recorded a few more like this, so if want to read about my other two, there's one here from earlier in the year.

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