Helping people to feel empowered and supported when they become parents 


Amina Hatia – midwife

Annual Eid prayers at her local mosque carry a special poignancy for midwife Amina Hatia: they offer a yearly chance to check in with some of the new lives she’s helped bring into the world.

“It’s an ongoing joke,” Hatia laughs. “Every year, five or six children get lined up to meet their ‘midwife auntie’. These poor kids are getting increasingly embarrassed by it, but their mums come and find me, and they’ll say: ‘She was the first person to hold you!’

“You don’t often get that as a midwife, it’s a lovely thing for me to see and experience.”

Hatia’s hands are full these days, not so much with newborn babies, but with a range of midwifery roles that span the NHS and the third sector.

She provides expert knowledge and training to the pregnancy charity, Tommy’s, as well as Doulas Without Borders (DWB), a grassroots network of volunteers supporting disadvantaged new and expectant parents. She was also instrumental in setting up DWB’s Mother Tongue project, which trains people who speak English as a second language to provide birth support to women who have recently arrived in the UK.

At the London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust, Haita delivers antenatal care while also leading change as cultural safety lead, working to create a more equitable, inclusive service for minority groups.

“Pregnancy is a huge, lifechanging event for almost everyone, especially if it’s their first baby,” says Hatia. “It’s a privilege to be part of that amazing journey. I know as a midwife that if people have positive experiences in their pregnancy, during labor and in birth, then that has a positive impact upon their parenting journey going forward. The most joyful bit for me is seeing people really flourish into that new role.”

Hatia describes herself as a natural nurturer, who relishes spending time in her kitchen cooking up South Asian and Middle Eastern food for her husband, Asim, their four grown-up children and the kids’ friends.

“They’re like adopted members of our family.” she says. “I like to think that if I’d been a midwife 100 years ago, I’d have been turning up at people’s houses with pots of soup!”

I saw how having a positive birth experience can be absolutely lifechanging, and remember thinking: ‘This is what I want to do with my life’

Back in her 20s, Hatia was heading for a career with the BBC as a broadcast journalist. She was already mum to her firstborn daughter, Saraa, following a pregnancy and birth which, she feels, were taken out of her hands. “I did what was expected of me,” she says. “It was OK, but I didn’t really know much about the world, or about myself, and I wasn’t really listened to.”

Her second pregnancy, however, would prove both inspirational and transformative.

Says Hatia: “When my second daughter, Amber, was born, I had an amazing midwife, who made me feel so safe that I had a completely different birth experience. I was able to do it without needing pain relief, which was incredibly empowering. I felt like I could climb Mount Everest!

“I saw how having a positive birth experience can be absolutely lifechanging, and remember thinking: ‘This is what I want to do with my life’. I started midwifery training two years later.”

Now, she brings that insight to her work with the NHS, nurturing expectant mothers and championing their right to make informed choices in maternity care.

“A key role of midwifery is supporting people in their own advocacy, helping them understand what maternity care is,” she explains. “The crux of maternity care is choice – and your own voice. If we get it right at the beginning, if people feel safe and confident in the services we provide and trust us, then we know that outcomes can be better.”

As a specialist in infant loss, Hatia finds some of her most rewarding moments in guiding families from tragedy to hope. She recalls one expectant mum who was deeply shaken by multiple pregnancy losses.

To see the relief flood through her and the trust she had in me was amazing. Then to see this couple become a family and launch into parenthood with a skip in their step brought tears to my eyes

“She was so frightened, tense and closed off,” says Hatia. “It was really important for her to have a particular type of birth, and I was able to tell her she wouldn’t have to fight for anything.

“To see the relief flood through her and the trust she had in me was amazing. Then to see this couple become a family and launch into parenthood with a skip in their step brought tears to my eyes.”

She brings that expertise to bear both in voluntary work helping DWB’s doulas navigate cases involving infant loss and through Tommy’s call-back service – sometimes providing pregnancy advice and other times simply being that much-needed shoulder to cry on.

“At the end of any working day, what’s really powerful for me is the small impacts we have on people,” she says.

Hatia recently passed the baton on to her daughter, Amber, who is now 23 and a newly graduated midwife. Working in an under-resourced NHS is not without its challenges, she admits, yet she finds hope and optimism in the breadth of her experience across the public and charity sectors.

“We’re having honest conversations, talking about the real importance of personalised care and moving away from judgement,” she says. “When it keeps me up at night, I can say with confidence that there is change happening on all levels, and that I can contribute to that.”

Photography: Sam Bush