Fording rivers and driving dangerous, winding roads is all in a day’s work for Coromandel midwife Sheryl Wright.
Wright covers northwest Coromandel - one of New Zealand’s most remote regions - caring for pregnant women and new mothers and delivering babies at home, sometimes off-grid.
Her sturdy station wagon is her clinic on wheels and has just clocked over 370,000 kilometres on the road, giving midwife care on the scenic and sometimes dangerous road between Manaia - 40 minutes north of Thames - and Port Jackson.
“It’s windy. It’s one-way. It’s got big drops off one side. In the summer, it’s challenging. In the winter, it can be a bit scary, really,” she tells RNZ’s Country Life.
“When I moved here six years ago, the Coromandel as a whole had a crisis of only 11 midwives and, post-Covid, we went down to three.
“I have been working on my own for six years now, covering this area ... an area larger than all of Auckland City.”
Wright’s clients can have a check-up at her once-a-week clinic in the town of Coromandel, but she also travels to them.
The nearest birth centre is in Thames, and for more complicated births, Waikato Hospital - a four-hour drive from Port Jackson, the furthest reach of Wright’s patch.
She provides ante and post-natal care and attends births for an average of 30 clients a year.
“You get to go to all sorts of interesting places and down little bits of roads where you wonder where you’re going.
“There’s a lot of my clients who live off-grid. They don’t actually have an address, so sometimes you have to follow quite specific instructions to find them.
Midwife Sheryl Wright checks Nicole at a clinic in Coromandel town. Photo / RNZ, Sally Round
“Cross this ford, turn left at this tree.”
Many of the women she sees have home births, out of choice or necessity, and she has to be very adaptable.
For planned home births, she has to make sure there is a second midwife available to help, although sometimes the babies can’t wait.
Poor mobile phone reception is a problem too, as one of Wright’s home birth clients explained.
Sheryl Wright covers northwest Coromandel, caring for pregnant women and new mothers and often delivering babies at home, sometimes off-grid. Photo / RNZ, Sally Round
“You’re in and out of service between there and here. My mum was trying to call Sheryl, but it kept cutting out.
“And by then [baby’s] head was out, and next thing, he was screaming. So it all just happened really fast.
“I was grateful that Sheryl made it in the end.”
On that occasion, Wright still had some stitching to do when she arrived, and the new mum’s mother helped her with torchlight from a cellphone.
Sheryl Wright's car carries everything including a full home birth kit, and a blow-up mattress as she may need to sleep before getting on the road again. Photo / RNZ, Sally Round
“It was a big, hot summer’s day, and I remember her mum wiped my brow with a tissue and said, “Oh, I wanted to do that!” Wright told Country Life.
Even Wright’s back-up plans have back-up plans, and she has invested in good communications equipment, including solar-powered Wi-Fi, in case things go down during extreme weather events.
Her car carries everything, including a full home birth kit, and a blow-up mattress, as she may need to sleep before getting on the road again.
“I carry everything in my car that you would ever need to have a baby.
“So I’ve got a lovely big picnic rug, which has had a few babies born on it.”
Sheryl Wright provides ante and post-natal care and attends births for an average of 30 to 40 clients a year. Photo / RNZ, Sally Round
On one occasion, even beach changing rooms were pressed into service to provide privacy for a client whose baby just couldn’t wait to get to the Thames Birthing Unit.
But Wright says with the region’s lack of public transport and many women on low incomes or unable to take time off work, not all are getting the care they need.
“The barriers are too large.
“They often just don’t have care, and they will just present in labour in the hospital.
“That’s a really big risk for the mum and the baby, and much harder for the staff to provide the care too because they’ve got no scans, no blood tests, no knowledge of the woman.”
Wright is on call 24/7 with just 10 days off a year.
She’s managed to get funding for an extra four days off a month because of her solo situation, and hopes that continues.
So, if you’re on the road and see a flashing green light coming up, try and move over because the local midwife could be on her way to deliver a baby in an off-grid cabin.
