A new midwife supervisor, Tracy, has started this week and seems absolutely lovely - calm, experienced and sensible. She is now the second midwife supervisor on the unit called Tracy, the current one being a flappy, angry nightmare. To avoid confusion, we have nicknamed them 'Reassuring Trace' and 'Non-reassuring Trace'.

Registrars like to do this kind of thing now and again to show you they've 'still got it', like your uncle squeezing himself into his Speedos despite the gasps of terrified onlookers around the hotel pool.

I’m all for explaining terminology as we go along, but if you don’t know what a stethoscope is, this is probably a book to regift. 

Tuesday, 9th Novermber 2004Bleeped awake at 3AM from my first half hour shut-eye in three shifts to prescribe a sleeping pill to a patient whose sleep is evidently much more important than mine. My powers are greater than I realised; I arrive on the ward to find the patient is asleep.

My bleep goes off - it’s the morning SHO asking for handover. I’ve spent two hours in this room, the longest I’ve ever spent with a patient who wasn’t under anaesthetic. On the way home I phone my mum to tell her I love her.

You work yourself to exhaustion, pushing yourself beyond what could be reasonably expected of you, and end up constantly feeling like you don’t know

I ask why. then remember why most people do most things, and thus find myself introduced - at the tender age of twenty-four - to the sexual kink of mummification.

From the most insignificant of actions can come the most serious of consequences.

Reading back, it felt extreme and unreasonable in terms of what was expected of me, but at the time I'd just accepted it as part of the job. There were points where I wouldn't have flinched if an entry read 'swam to Iceland for antenatal clinic' or 'had to eat a helicopter today'.