| INTERVIEW
Excerpts from an interview with Birth Centre staff in the magazine ‘Living’ (Sept/Oct 2005)
Author: Chris Muyres
Working with happiness
The Birth Centre Amsterdam was founded by the Netherlands’ most famous midwife, Beatrijs Smulders. The centre includes an obstetric practice, a maternity care centre, a course centre, a clinic, a day care centre, a lactation consultancy and the Birth Shop. In total more than fifty people work there, from midwives to doctors to carers and lactation consultants. It is a hugely successful concept, unique in Europe. The key figures in the business are perhaps the people in the office who organise everything for the centre’s clients. Over the years, seven colleagues who work in the Birth Centre’s office have built up a close friendship.
Harriët, office manager, obstetric practice: ‘Like my colleague Ellen, I came here myself when I was pregnant. I was in PR in the fashion industry, but I wanted to move from the commercial sector to the social sector. After I’d been working here a year, I started seeing my colleagues a lot more outside of work too. I enjoy going to work every day, but that’s not just down to the friendship with my colleagues, it’s also because of the work and the line of business.’
Ellen, assistant, obstetric practice: ‘When I was at high school I wanted to be a midwife and I still think it’s the best profession there is. At the time I couldn’t get onto the training course. Later it was too awkward to combine with a family. Now I’m happy still to be involved in a different way in the work that I always wanted to do. People come here at a happy time in their lives, but of course there are also extremely sad times too, although we don’t experience that as closely as the midwives. They do talk to us about it – they’re very open and I think that’s good for everybody.’
Nadja, manager, maternity care centre: ‘You’re usually working with happy people here, with women who are in a very beautiful phase of their lives. That’s special and it definitely contributes to the feeling that the work is so enjoyable. There’s a great relationship between the colleagues here. We e-mail, we eat out together, we organise weekends and all but two of us have a house or a caravan at the campsite in Bakkum, a sort of Amsterdam in the woods. I’ve actually been going there the longest. Every time I saw something nice come up for sale there, I wanted to find someone nice to buy it.’
Masja, assistant, obstetric practice: ‘I also came to the Birth Centre because I was pregnant and I knew then that if I ever wanted somewhere to work, this would be it. When I saw a job advertised in the paper, I thought “That’s me, don’t look any further!” At first I kept myself in the background a bit because I hate it when people push their way into a “club”. I soon realised it was a tightly-knit group. Now I don’t feel like I’m the newest. I am the youngest though, but that’s nice: they look after me a bit!’
Annemarie, secretary: ‘The advantage of being so close to your colleagues is that at a stroke you’ve got a ready-made group of friends. Because we all work part time, there are some people you see relatively little of. That’s why we also e-mail outside working hours – on my computer it’s called “the club”.’
Patricia, maternity assistant and secretary: ‘I’ve now trained to be a maternity assistant and I’ve had my first families. It’s really nice work, I’m now very directly involved in the people’s happiness. It does mean that I’m hardly ever in the office any more, and I miss that a lot. So now I’m going to work one day a week in the office again – they’ve kept a place free specially for me. To me there are only advantages in being very close to your colleagues. Our “boss” Beatrijs is also very happy that we get on so well. She also isn’t a person who makes you feel that she’s on top of you, she doesn’t breath down your neck. Of course we live it up here sometimes, but we work hard too. Everyone cares about the business, and it’s infectious. Every year we do an act during the Birth Centre Christmas party. Last year we did “The Full Monty”, it was hilarious. We could see the midwives and our other colleagues wondering just how far we’d go.’
Netje, deputy director and homeopath: ‘Alongside my management role I also work at the Birth Centre as a homeopath. I’m now much closer to the happy event, because I work a lot with women who’ve just given birth and their newborn babies. In principle as a homeopath you work on your own. That’s why I’m glad to have a practice here, where there’s such nice contact with other people.’ |