Long-serving Carolyn Batten  was lucky enough to be invited to Downing Street  yesterday to an NHS70 bash where healthcare colleagues from the across the country were the special guests. Everyone with more than 40 years service went into a draw so getting a ticket was amazing.

Carolyn said: " It was such an experience full of wnoderful NHS workers. The northern delegates stuck together and we had a tremendous day." At the end of the session Jeremy Hunt presented each with a 40 years award.

Here's more about her career in  Carolyn's  own words.

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I work on the Delivery Suite as a Midwife for Calderdale and Huddersfield Foundation Trust. I did all my Nurse training in Huddersfield starting with Orthopaedic Nursing in March 1975 followed by general Nursing to become a State Registered Nurse in 1979 when I won the silver medal.

Then Midwifery training to become a State Certified Midwife early in 1980. I took a modular degree alongside work starting in 2000 graduating in 2007 and I've worked as a Midwife ever since.

I spent a long number of years as a steward, initially with The Royal College of Midwives then with Unison.

Things have changed ….. for example when I was a student midwife we had just one fetal heart monitor kept in the nursery under a sheet - which one of us lifted occasionally while we all peered at the monitor and thought, 'hmmmm they'll never catch-on'.

Though the use of epidural as analgesia for childbirth had reached us 'up north' in the 1970s we only had one anaesthetist in Huddersfield who could perform them and then only on Thursday mornings.

Consequently, if we admitted someone with dangerously high blood pressure on the verge of eclampsia on a Friday we would keep her sedated in a darkened room until the following Thursday so we could induce labour under epidural.

Some things have not changed despite technology, medicalisation, improvements in medications, interventions and facilities. Women and their families need midwives, midwives with knowledge, skill, kindness, wisdom and compassion.

I am humbled and proud to have been part of the great NHS and able to work as a midwife during the most unpredictable, emotional and often frightening journey ever undertaken.....Labour and Childbirth.