As a midwife myself, I was completely caught-up in the narrative but its also a coming of age tale, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes inspiring and always fascinating. In this stunning, gripping true story, Anna Kent confronts unimaginable hardships to do good in the world . All this changes, they end up being more like strangers than the partners they were before she went to the South Sudan. Anna I am so sorry about your darling daughter Fatima but my heart screamed with delight at Aisha’s birth with the lovely and divine Nicky in attendance (what a gorgeous human being she is). As a student midwife aspiring to partake in humanitarian aid further down in my career, this book was life changing!

I also found it fascinating that James has gone from being around the beginning of life to now working with those at the end of their lives. Writing has become a form of therapy for Anna who, after retiring from the frontline work, sought help to deal with her PTSD and emotional trauma which she said has given her freedom and a real sense of power. This searing memoir of the brutality of pregnancy and birth in the developing world, through the eyes of an impassioned but initially naive, midwife is a wonderful read. It’s empowering and refreshing to read an account about birth written by a woman, a mother and a midwife. However, I think these graphic stories are needed in the book to really show the importance of midwifery and care in underdeveloped countries.And the desire for a child is for many women so elemental to their lives and this doesn’t change whether you live in Nottingham or Sudan. The type of difference Anna has made is how I hope to practice once qualified, everyone deserves the best care possible. I really wanted to reach into the book and hug Anna when she went through the birth/death of her baby.

At twenty-six years old, not yet a fully-trained midwife, she delivered a baby in a tropical storm by the light of a headtorch; the following year, she would be responsible for the female health of 30,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. This book heads you so close to life and death with the thread of hope that numerous paragraphs will make you cry. It would be easy to fall into the trap of comparing the dangerous birthing experiences of women in places such as south Sudan and Bangladesh with the relative comfort of women accessing UK maternity provision, and to portray UK mothers as ungrateful or overprivileged.This is heartbreaking to read at times but you cannot turn away because you fall in love with Anna and want her to come through it all in one piece. For me it resulted in a very important but hard to swallow book, and some serious reflection on my career goals.

As inspiring as it is harrowing, this is a story of women in crisis, told through the lens of a remarkable midwife.This is not to say that she shies away from the political contexts of the places she works; reading the book has given me a harrowing introduction to several ongoing global tragedies.

Compare this with the fleeting connections she has with the women she treats, trying to cut through politics, patriarchal society and personal doubt to help the women and their babies. The book may well help some readers to recognise unhealthy thought processes and potential signs of needing more support from friends, colleagues and employers. People in the UK still think too little about other’s suffering and think there’s nothing wrong out there just because they have all they need. This book is an amazing read, about Anna, the perhaps more idealistic person she was at the very beginning of her career as an aid worker, how Anna dealt with things in her private life too.As part of her work, she was able to lead the building of a new maternity hospital and this was such an achievement for her. This contributes to the fact that despite the strong focus on overseas midwifery, the book feels relevant to all midwives currently practicing. Throughout the course of the book, Kent manages to slowly turn self-criticism into self-reflection, and to find more beneficial coping strategies.