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Patsy quit her job. Susannah quit the city. Now they’re on a quest to find the path through the wobbly middle of their careers. This podcast is for every woman who’s asking “What now?”.
Hosted by Susannah de Jager and Patsy Day, The Wobbly Middle features interviews with famed city superwomen, dazzling entrepreneurs and revolutionary midwives and doctors who reveal what they’ve learnt through their own wobbly middle experiences.
[00:00:07] Patsy Day: Welcome to The Wobbly Middle, a podcast about women reinventing their careers by Susannah de Jager and Patsy Day.
[00:00:21] Susannah de Jager: Hi Pats.
[00:00:22] Patsy Day: Hi Susannah.
[00:00:23] Susannah de Jager: How's your wobbly middle?
[00:00:24] Patsy Day: A friend of mine became a grandmother this week and it made me realise how very far I am from those newborn days, those tiny babies and those tiny baby grows and I've reflected so much on how much has happened in the last 10-12 years since my children were born. Unfortunately, what's not changed is how little investment there is in maternal health care and I was pretty shocked to see the statistic, was that only 1 percent of pharma R& D goes into maternal health. So, I'm very interested to speak to Nina today, a midwife, about the interesting things that she's doing. How's your wobbly middle?
[00:01:09] Susannah de Jager: Like you, I feel that talking to a midwife this week is very apt. It's not the same for everyone, but for me, giving birth was definitely one of the first moments at which I realised my life really was not within my control. Birth plan, yeah, good luck, all natural, ha, like to see you try. Baby bubble, again, nice idea but probably not the reality. It's the most incredible thing in the world to give birth in any way and I stress that for those listening, but it's a reality check. You realise that sometimes things change and it's completely outside of your control and that the most control you potentially have is how you respond, adapt, and come to terms with that. Like careers, birth plans change and hopefully, like a good midwife, The Wobbly Middle is here to help you navigate those changes.
[00:01:59] Patsy Day: Today's guest is Nina van Schaick, a midwife of over 12 years, who's turning her knowledge of childbirth into an innovative business. She's looking to reduce the often devastating and sadly in many cases avoidable tears that women suffer during childbirth. Having worked as a practitioner for years, she has designed a solution to improve the antenatal outcome for millions of women. I want to hear more, and I want to understand how she went from seeing a problem to deciding she was going to do something about it.
[00:02:32] Susannah de Jager: Nina, thank you so much for joining today.
[00:02:35] Nina van Schaick: Pleasure, it's lovely to be here.
[00:02:36] Susannah de Jager: So I'd love to hear a little bit about how you got into midwifery.
[00:02:41] Nina van Schaick: I felt called, is that a very odd thing to say?
[00:02:45] Susannah de Jager: No, not at all.
[00:02:45] Nina van Schaick: I've got a very strong connection with birth and all things birth-y since I was younger, but actually my schooling pushed me in a creative direction and I spent some time in the theatre and then I realised when I was working in London, I wanted to come back to this very earthy, real job I did a lot of research, I met quite a lot of midwives and realised I'd found my tribe of incredibly bossy, leadership skills women who work with this incredibly powerful thing that was birth and from my first experience of being around birth, I was completely hooked and I'm sure many midwives would say the same thing is that they're in there the first birth and they're like, absolute oxytocin junkies and they love caring for families and caring for women and helping around that crazy energetic time of birth, that's how I got into it.
[00:03:35] Susannah de Jager: It is this amazing time, you're present for it, it must be extraordinary. But also, for lots of the women you're interacting with, it's a complete watershed moment. There is a before and after that's distinct for any parent, but mothers, obviously, that you're interacting with, what do you see? is it similar? Is it different? is there a moment that you can almost see it dawning on people?
[00:03:58] Nina van Schaick: I think it comes at different times. I think we talk a lot about transitions in labour, if you've ever I've been to a birth class and talk about transition as this one thing, but it's never just the one thing. It's lots and lots of transitions and in women who've had different birth experiences, you see it at different times. For example, I am privileged to work in the way I do now is I care for people maybe from when they first pee on a stick to six weeks postnatally and for some people it really doesn't hit until that time in the postnatal period, but they have that huge surrender to the process. Sometimes it happens in labor, sometimes it happens several times. So that transition, that huge stepping over, particularly with the first baby, in lots of cultures for example, in the Khmer culture in Cambodia, they call it crossing the water. So you have to go across, you have to leave your sort of maidenhood, your girlness behind, because you actually have to go through this huge transitional process and it's recognised. It's a really, yeah, it's a really good way of describing it, I think and it's, really interesting and really privileged to see that in the families that I work with.
[00:04:58] Susannah de Jager: It's so interesting, mine didn't come until six weeks after and I remember it vividly. I sat in a chair, it was the middle of the night, I was feeding my daughter and I thought everything has changed. Everything has changed. My life will never be the same again and it was such a vivid experience.
[00:05:17] Patsy Day: And after you became a mother,
[00:05:19] Nina van Schaick: sometimes when the birthing doesn't go so well and the outcome is not what everybody hoped for. How have you worked through that,cause you must feel those emotions from the mum and dad and after you had children, how did that change for you in the more darker times in your role?
Well, being a midwife is 98 percent amazing and the 2 percent is a very dark place, as you say. But those people, they need better care than everyone else. They need more because they only have the memories of that birth. If you're talking about a really bad outcome, they only remember that. They don't have the memories of the child growing up and being with them. So that is, it's a calling in itself and I know midwives who only work in bereavement care, for example, because they find it so rewarding.
because you can make such a huge difference in that family's life, because I have 90 year old women telling me about their birth story and what the midwife said. Yeah, they remember you are in a position of power and privilege and you have to be humble and remember that at every point. You have to be very careful at what comes out of your mouth, because they will remember when they are 70, 80, 90 years old, they will tell you. My grandmother told me about what happened during the birth of one of my uncles. She remembered, she was 84. It was vividly in her mind.
[00:06:43] Patsy Day: Every time you say you're a midwife, the women you're speaking to, there must be a kaleidoscope of emotions on their face and everybody must want to share their birth stories you.
[00:06:52] Nina van Schaick: Yeah, and that's fine, you are a container for that.
[00:06:54] Patsy Day: And that's fine.
[00:06:55] Nina van Schaick: It's fine, it's fine. You have to be a container for that you know, you develop that professional ability to hold that stuff for people, that's part of the job. Actually, a lot of the job is holding that stuff for people. I'd go intopeople's houses where they've had previous birth experiences that have been horrendous you know, you can never tell on paper what someone experiences at birth. You could look at something and say, oh, she had a perfectly normal birth in the pool, in the birth centre and she can find out the most traumatic thing that's ever happened to her or you can have an emergency section that on paper looks like the biggest, car crash imaginable, but actually because she was treated with respect, she was communicated with, she felt like she was in control of those emotions, she was in control of the decisions that were made, it doesn't have to be traumatic, it's all about how you were cared for.
[00:07:39] Patsy Day: And support for midwives themselves.
[00:07:42] Nina van Schaick: I think we're getting better. Actually, I've kind of popped in and out of the NHS in the last six years, because of starting to work privately and actually, I've noticed a cultural shift. I think it's a panic response, to be honest, in realising that we're literally hemorrhaging midwives because they're saying, how do you expect us to do this immensely taxing, emotional role and do it well with compassion and professionalism, but not get any support. They removed supervisors of midwives probably about eight years ago now. So you used to have a supervisor. My sister in law, for example, is a clinical psychologist and when she first qualified and started working in the public sector, she had supervision every week and we had supervision once a year.
[00:08:27] Patsy Day: Right.
[00:08:28] Nina van Schaick: So an opportunity to talk about how we felt, professionally and any needs that we had for training. It was a tick box process, but it was still there and now we don't even have that. This is why one in four midwives have mental health problems and they're leaving in droves because if you are holding that space, that energetic space for that family, you need to be held safely by something else and currently I have to say that's not the NHS. have huge respect for it I have such deep respect for my colleagues who are still working full time in that environment.
[00:08:59] Patsy Day: And where is the advocating coming from for those midwives? Is there some energy behind that?
[00:09:07] Nina van Schaick: I think it's starting. I think the next generation of midwives, so they're slightly younger than me, are far more organised and active in that way. There's much more support for the students and there's a different cultural shift. I think a lot of people retired,during COVID. I think a lot of people thought this is it, I'm done because the working conditions were so hard and I think that has done quite a lot of good in that it's flushed things through in some places, you know, systems get static, don't they? it gets stuck and I think an influx of new ideas and actually realising that we have to care for midwives and support them, yeah, has come through.
[00:09:44] Patsy Day: But you must be losing a lot of the experienced midwives?
[00:09:47] Nina van Schaick: That's the point really, isn't it? hence the media coverage for, we're running out of midwives, got to recruit more midwives. No, actually,
what you want to do is retain the midwives that have got 15 years of clinical experience because they're the ones you want in the room. I mean, the ones who are just newly qualified are amazing and passionate and knowledgeable in lots of ways, but it's their feet on the ground, hands on babies that you need.
[00:10:09] Patsy Day: Nina, advocacy comes through strongly in the work that you do and you've said before you are, I think you described yourself as being a vicious advocate for postnatal care. But I think this is something that runs through both your professional life and then your life outside of the hospital.
[00:10:29] Nina van Schaick: Yeah, absolutely. So I think it comes from being a kind of a family of Cornish farmers where we see a problem and want to have to sort it out ourselves, basically. So I see an issue that needs addressing either in my community or, you know, in my professional life, which has brought me to the point where I am now. So for example, in my community where I live, there was a market that being run very sweetly by one chap and it's a lot to run a community organisation on your own. So, a friend and I took it over as co chair and essentially reinvigorated it in four years now we've been running it. We ran little festivals, we increased the storeholders, we really treated it as a business and a community asset and I think for the good of the community and it's, we did it because we loved going there on a Sunday morning with our kids and having a cup of coffee and seeing everyone and shopping in a different way as people love their farmers markets, but actually it needed a committed effort on our part for about a year to really reinvigorate it, to recruit a team around us who could help us, of community volunteers and reinvigorate the trust that community had in the market would be there and now it's a real success story. Mostly in part, I have to say to my wonderful friend, Tamsin, who has done amazing things, but I can also take a small amount of credit for it in my spare time.
[00:11:49] Patsy Day: Business skills coming through their midwifery experience, wanting to solve problems and so I suppose that brings you to what you're doing now, which is also, innovation that's come through a deep sense of frustration.
[00:12:04] Nina van Schaick: Yeah, absolutely. So born of professional frustration, facilitating physiological births and trying to follow the evidence because the wonderful thing about midwifery now in the last 30 years, we've got a huge body of evidence that's been produced that we didn't have before because nobody bothered to research it. So we know now we have huge systematic reviews that show that what we're trying to develop with PeriPear actually works and reduces perinatal trauma by 50%, I mean that's immense for women and birthing people and I was continually frustrated by the fact that I want to be the best midwife I can be for each individual family and woman that I care for. But I found myself lacking the extra arms and the adequate facilities to do this properly, to see whether we could actually make a difference and so that was my idea, that was the initial idea for PeriPear is, as you say, professional frustration and looking around and thinking, why are we not doing this? It's so obvious. But also it comes from a confidence thing, I think. I didn't know whether that was something that I was able to do and the last ten months has told me that I can totally do that. Every time we've presented this to somebody, so either our wonderful clinical advisors who have come on board and been tremendously excited and enthusiastic about it, or, to my wonderful co founder Evi, at every stage, I guess this is a woman thing as well, is expecting someone to say, well, don't be so silly, of course this won't work. But actually at each stage people said, yes, let's do this, it's great.
[00:13:31] Patsy Day: I want to come back to Evi in a second, but just to explain PeriPear for the listeners, it is a Femtech solution to reduce tearing during labor.
[00:13:43] Nina van Schaick: Yes. So it's a wearable device for reducing perineal trauma in second stage of when the baby is emerging. Yes, it is a completely innovative solution.
[00:13:54] Patsy Day: And there is so little it's a gaping hole.
[00:14:03] Susannah de Jager: I can't believe you went there. But I love that you did. Funny enough, as a segue from that, I've just written a question, what were the gaps? Let's continue in a theme. I would love to hear actually what the gaps were that you thought you couldn't do and that you've now proven to yourself you can, because I think that's something that when people are listening at home, you know, in the wobbly middle, wanting to maybe do something. I think so many people suffer from those gaps in confidence, gaps in your knowledge, thinking you have to have the full solution yourself and I'd love to hear specifically the ones that you're like, Oh, turns out I can.
[00:14:43] Nina van Schaick: Yeah, that's a great question. the gaps, the gaping holes. We'll back to that. I'm all about the midwifery puns, so do stop me. I think it is about saying, do you have to have the perfect solution yourself? Do you have to be everything for this? Or can you trust that you will find other people who will do those missing bits for you? Particularly with finding our network and finding wonderful angels and people who, it's the ingredients in the stew, isn't it, basically of the project and trusting the process that it will come together and not having to say, I have to be everything.
[00:15:17] Susannah de Jager: You can't set yourself up as having a one stop shop. You're not, nobody is. I imagine there is not one single founder who has all those elements together. So actually finding a co-founder by beautiful coincidence and we'll talk, I'm happy to...
[00:15:32] Patsy Day: Yeah, tell about Evi.
[00:15:34] Nina van Schaick: We live in the same place, we live in beautiful Wolvercote, and our youngest children are very good friends, we started swimming in the river together because that's what we like to do and we both need extreme cold to relax, that sounds odd, but there it is.
[00:15:48] Susannah de Jager: Little, little segue into your mind there for a second, Nina.
[00:15:51] Nina van Schaick: That or...
[00:15:52] Susannah de Jager: The calm pools.
[00:15:54] Nina van Schaick: The calm pools. So he and I would talk about everything and anything. He's got the brain in size of a planet. I mean, and we both slightly odd people and we like big chat. So we get in the river and talk about religion and science and proteins and all this stuff and then, yeah, just before Christmas, I knew he was working in the sort of biotech startup world and just before Christmas, I, I sort of plucked up my courage to bring him this idea and so the problem and a solution, I thought the solution, and he leapt enthusiastically on boardand he's very good at, he's got that business background. I mean, he's got a really great scientific background, he's got a PhD from Cambridge, did some work at MIT. He is really good at analysing at systems, at working out the strategy. he is the perfect, it's basically the perfect, essentially a marriage. I mean, he's married to a lovely woman and I'm married to a lovely man, but we are, we have a business marriage and we work brilliantly. His energy and his enthusiasm and his drive, actually, he got a nickname in the army, which is the tractor and I see it. He is the tractor, he is absolutely unstoppable, he does not quit until that thing is done and I am so inspired every day by working with him, it's been an absolute pleasure.
[00:17:11] Patsy Day: And currently you are in the funding rounds.
[00:17:14] Nina van Schaick: Yeah, we're in fundraising. So, Evi's full time on this, I'm about 60%. I'm still working with clients. But obviously in the startup world and founder mode is what they call it now, isn't it? I'm in founder mode, so basically every other single minute of my day is spent doing PeriPear. We are fundraising, we're looking for 850K, to get us to the point of post clinical trials, get our data and start commercialisation, so it's exciting times, very exciting. We're having some really exciting conversations with angels and we've been really well supported as well by, sort of angel networks in Oxford. We've had some really amazing, I cannot say how amazing the support has been from Oxford Innovation Finance.
[00:17:54] Patsy Day: It's really reassuring to hear you say that about the support and experience and you and I and Patsy have discussed this insofar as it's a female focused subject. Notoriously female founders and femtech are underfunded by what is still a predominantly male venture capital angel investing environment. Do you think actually now there's so much coverage of that problem that people are hyper aware that they need to be receptive, open minded, and from your seat, do you think there's maybe an inflection point where we can start tipping those numbers into the positive?
[00:18:30] Nina van Schaick: I really hope so. It seems, again, you don't know, do you, because it's an echo chamber. LinkedIn is an echo chamber, the media is an echo chamber. Particularly now in 2024, we don't really know what the wider picture is because we see what we see and we hear what is it within our circle. So within my hearing, I feel positive. I feel that there's so much more awareness. However, I'm on lots of WhatsApp groups with lots of amazing female founders and we're still seeing, oh, look at this cohort, it's entirely male. You know, look at this cohort for, you know, for tech, mostly kind of fintech stuff. In Europe, you know, there's one woman there out of 25 men that they funded as, founders in their kind of accelerator or whatever it is. So, I would like to be optimistic and positive and I feel that the coverage is there in the same way that the sort of recognition of birth trauma and things that, you know, this all comes to a crest this year with the inquiry. I think it is pushing through and there is the momentum behind it. So if that can be realised, how amazing. I think there's a lot of fluff around Femtech as well. Like my bullshit radar is pretty sharp and I feel that there's quite a lot of people in it for the quick buck, do you know?And actually that's something that's come back as well from other investors that I've been chatting to and they've been like, yeah, Femtech, it's like a souffle at the moment, basically someone's gonna pop it soon and I don't feel that I think it's actually, there are some genuine graft gone into that and some real progress being made. So the media is one thing and I think what's actually happening on the ground feels different. However, I'm still talking to female founders who are, you know, have predominantly sat in front of ten men and pitched to them. But, I enjoy talking about vulvas to ten men in suits because they hopefully know someone with one, so it's still relevant to them.
[00:20:21] Susannah de Jager: Love that.
[00:20:22] Patsy Day: You said earlier that we don't necessarily, have all the skills we need ready made.
What would you say to women who are at a point in their lives where they might be coming out of early child raising years, where they're having a bit more time to think about themselves and how they want to move forward, but don't necessarily have the confidence, to take those next steps. How do you think we can build confidence and resilience in ourselves?
[00:20:51] Nina van Schaick: Well, that's a great question. I think it's separating yourself from those identities of the child raising and recognising what an achievement has been to get them to that point frankly, I think everyone who sends a child through school gates has done a miraculous thing, regardless of what team they've done it with. They've still got a whole human to that point where they're basically a human, although it might not feel like it for some four and five year olds And that's a huge thing and we are starting, aren't weslowly to recognise the work of mothering or whatever, however you want to pitch it. However, I think it's for those women who maybe feel they dropped their career identity, going into that, or made those sacrifices or however you want to word it, going in. I think returning to themselves and finding equilibrium for themselves, investing in themselves, because we're so bad at that as women, we're so bad at thinking, okay, now I've got to get into something else and I've got to do something for someone else. Actually, if you spend time on you, I know this is obvious, but it's that oxygen mask thing on the plane, isn't it? Is you put your own one first, you sort yourself out, you make some lists, you do some dreaming, time and space. Talked to an amazing woman this morning who's a potential investor, I hope, and she has done the child rearing, yes, but she also was very successful, she was a CEO until last year, and then she decided to take a pause and she's in a privileged position. She can do that because she's made her way in that way, you know, her niche. But she also prioritised herself and her family and friends and actually having that time and we never have time in that process to stop and I think people who dive back into corporate careers, I've seen this with friends, you know, they've stopped, they've done the baby, sorted the baby out, baby's a year or younger, and they're straight back in and they're trying not to miss a beat, actually giving yourself a beat is amazing and Ithink a pause is definitely the start of something. If we give, we don't have any time to think now. We're constantly being distracted and actually finding that within yourself and finding the things that you like doing, because realistically, you won't have done anything that you're passionate about for so long.
[00:23:05] Patsy Day: You also seem to draw on the natural networks in your life that seem to be strong to you. mid sisterhood you've built up, you know, you've sort of built up a network of other female founders and I think opening our eyes to the sisterhood around us.
[00:23:26] Nina van Schaick: Yes. The what is there.
[00:23:27] Patsy Day: Yeah.
[00:23:28] Nina van Schaick: And actually you can think that it has to be this lightning bolt moment of something amazing whereas actually it might just be right there looking at you and thinking, okay, well that small idea that I thought was stupid isn't stupid. It's what I've been dreaming about and maybe easing yourself into being able to say that, but that comes from a lot of investment in yourself.
[00:23:50] Patsy Day: And also having the confidence to think, I can fix the problem that I see in front of us. I read a statistic recently about, women in midlife, they are the super consumers, they spend 90 percent of household income and so midlife women are seeing the gaps, they're seeing what they can't do, they're seeing where the problems are because they are the ones doing the research on the travel insurance, they are the ones buying the product for the house, they can see the gaps and so, going back to innovation coming out of frustration, that's, you know, if there's a problem, you can probably fix it somehow.
[00:24:32] Nina van Schaick: Absolutely and I know that's a cliche saying, if you want something done, ask a busy woman, but oh my goodness. I'm not discriminating against people who are not parents, but if you get a group of people together and you've got the mothers in the group, they'll be like, right, we'll do this, this and this. There we go, done, fine, I'll do something else now. Your efficiency goes through the roof, frankly. I think we should all be employing and supporting founders who are parents because, oh my goodness, the things you can achieve in an hour without your kid. It's incredible!
[00:25:01] Susannah de Jager: I think there are two things that are coming through really strongly here and one is the lack of recognition for skills that motherhood or even non paid work in any form gives people and you spoke about community networks, you've spoken about efficiency of working moms, I agree with everything. But the other one that I'm really dwelling on, because I think it bears referring back to is just the space and how at odds with busy lives that is and how important that space is and you've said it very clearly, but we have heard it from various people in completely different walks of life that we've interviewed, by the way, just that thing of it's okay to not have all the answers, to sit in discomfort for a period of time and to dwell on what might be right in front of you and I'm repeating exactly what you said, but I just think it's so important. I'm almost saying it to myself because I struggled to do that.
[00:26:02] Nina van Schaick: We all do, we all do, absolutely and I think it's partly a validation thing, isn't it? You think you have to be, whatever you've been taught in your career up to this point is that you have to have the answers and if you're going to be a woman in this place, then you have to be good, amazing, okay, cause you're taking up space otherwise. Yeah. Oh, so I have to be everything. Okay. I'll be everything look at me go, woohoo, look at the plate spinning. But then, oh my goodness, how does anyone do that? How does anyone be everything? You can't be everything, it's ridiculous and I think if you release that, which is a great midlife thing, you know, you're like, well, obviously I'm not going to do all of this stuff. Maybe I could just sit in discomfort, as you say, we can be okay with not being everything and that's powerful.
[00:26:43] Susannah de Jager: And I've really seen it recently in projects where I've worked with different groups of people and occasionally somebody will say, well, that's really outside of my wheelhouse. I wouldn't want to comment on that and I think, God, that's amazing, I don't think I'd ever say that, which is awful or allow a space and a silence not to be filled by you thinking it's your responsibility.
[00:27:09] Nina van Schaick: To keep everyone taking along and everyone happy, la, la, la. It's not, you are not, I call it the Nina Show. I don't have to do that. Like, I hit 40 and I was like, do you know what? Cancelling The Nina Show.
[00:27:24] Susannah de Jager: Nina in her forties, what would you go back and tell Nina in her thirties?
[00:27:29] Nina van Schaick: I would tell her that however she's doing it is absolutely fine and have permission to have that space. You can stop, you can slow and everything will still happen, that you don't have to be the opposite center of everything, you don't have to be in control of everything all the time and that is whether it's in the home, in the family, in the job, actually you can just sit with yourself in that stillness at like exactly as you experiencing. If you sit there and you don't say anything, then sometimes magical things happen and people don't think, well, how stupid she is, she's not saying anything. Actually, that is the power of the, yeah, I would say that, that would be a really good lesson for Nina in her thirties to learn. She didn't have it, she was just chat, chat, chat.
[00:28:14] Susannah de Jager: I think that's the best thing we could leave on.
I think all it leaves is to say thank you.
[00:28:20] Patsy Day: Yes. Thank you very much.
[00:28:21] Nina van Schaick: My pleasure, that was absolutely wonderful to chat with you.
[00:28:25] Susannah de Jager: And we'd definitely like to hear how you get on with your funding, so please stay in touch and we'd like to be able to tell our listeners too.
Amazing.
[00:28:34] Nina van Schaick: We can do a little update. That would be great. I'd love that.
[00:28:36] Patsy Day: Thank you for listening to The Wobbly Middle. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on Apple or Spotify, it really makes a difference and if you're in the wobbly middle of your career and would like to share your story with us, please drop us a line via Substack, Instagram or Facebook. We'd love to hear what's inspiring you or, if you're out the other side of your wobbly middle, please let us know how you got there.