Experience of an obstetrics doctor during the pandemic.

We line up single file in an orderly queue, awaiting our turn to be temperature screened at the entrance to the Hospital. A thermometer is held to our heads, arms length in a pistol grip by a masked person. A coloured dot is attached to our name tag and permits us entry.

We have been fit checked for the appropriate masks, drilled on the donning and doffing of gowns and gloves, and advised on the testing of patients at highest risk of aerosolising the contagious viral particles. Our staff have been split into rotating rosters, clinics are closed, elective surgery has come to a halt. We watched the numbers creeping up, the lock downs come, we are prepared.

Fortunately the women keep arriving, healthy, birthing their babies as they always have. The amniotic sac a bubble of serenity and normality in all the chaos and anxiety.