01 February 2023

A lifetime of delivering babies: “At every single birth, through all the years, it was always amazing, just as it was that first time”

Writer: Carly Thomas

Photographer: Tess Charles

Brenda McHugo, 80, decided she wanted to be a midwife when she was twelve years old following an out-of-the-ordinary event that meant she witnessed something quite spectacular – the birth of a baby and the beginning of a new life.

Sitting in her home in Manakau near Levin, Brenda leans forward on the stick she carries to balance herself with. There is a glint in her eye and after a pause, timed perfectly to stir a sense of drama, she tells the story as if it were yesterday. “Our neighbour Mrs Freeth was pregnant with her second baby. She was at the clothesline and she called to me and said, ‘Brenda, get your mother.’ And so I did. Now mum was a sook, and she saw that Mrs Freeth was in labour, and she said, ‘You stay with Mrs Freeth and hold her hand and I will call the doctor.’ We had a phone you see – the Freeth’s didn’t.” Brenda pauses again here with a theatrical look of astonishment on her face. “I was twelve, for goodness sake!” she admonishes. “And Mrs Freeth was well into labour.” The young Brenda didn’t just hold her neighbour’s hand; within minutes she found herself catching the baby. “And it was just the most magnificent thing that I had ever done.” A new life and also the start of a journey for Brenda – a lifelong career. The spark of an idea and the ignition of a calling into midwifery.

After leaving school and taking up a job at Johnson & Johnson – which Brenda says, with accompanying eye rolls, was, “So boring!” – she eventually began her maternity nurse training in New Plymouth. “I went into Dizzy Danes’ class and we got up to some terrible hijinks. We were living in Westown Nurses Home in the charge of Hyacinth Henderson, who was our boss. She was a great nurse. I remember we had triplets at the hospital, which back then was really unusual, and she stayed in a little room for three months tube feeding them and helping to look after them.”

Dizzy and Hyacinth were just two of the women who helped to shape the young Brenda. “My mother had six children and she was the highest qualified piano and singing teacher in New Zealand at that time. Aunty Rhona got a double first at Victoria in French and English literature and Aunty Mavis was a teacher.” Brenda clenches her fist with a triumphant, gleeful gesture. “Oh, I was around a lot of strong women growing up.”

And now she is surrounded by her own family, at the top of a long and bumpy drive where Brenda has the best view. She overlooks her son Ben’s house where he lives with his wife Allie – the principal of nearby Te Horo School – and off to the left, across the wide lawn, is Brenda’s other son Kimbal and his wife Julie. Brenda’s daughter Deborah lives not too far away in Wellington, where she works as a neonatal nurse. There are grandchildren galore; they call her ‘Grana’ and she adores them. Ben built this little house with the big view just for her and Brenda assures everyone that he builds to last. “See that shed down there?” Brenda gestures with her stick, a constant companion and useful tool. “That’s our woodshed that Ben built. We call it the Rhino Shed and if there is a tornado we will strap ourselves to it.” Brenda chuckles at the thought of it before her attention is drawn to something outside the window. “Get away, you bugger!” she shouts. There is a hawk circling Brenda’s menagerie of chooks and ducks, and in an age-defying jump to her feet, that stick of hers is swung in the air. “It’s after my ducklings!” The hawk retreats and, crisis averted, Brenda settles back into her life tale.

After Brenda finished in New Plymouth, she went off to Australia, and then to England to do her midwifery training at St Mary’s Hospital in Croydon. “When I was in South London I had a bike that I would get around on, and then later I had a scooter. I would sing opera while I travelled around with my fellow students getting back from parties. We had a curfew that we were always missing.” Brenda’s bike was also used to go out to attend women in labour, which would often be at night. “I was racing off to one lady quite late and I tipped off my bike. I had holes in my black stockings and my knees were bleeding. I asked for a newspaper when I got there, just so I could kneel on it and save their carpet.”

“I delivered [actor and comedian] Ronnie Corbett’s wife’s baby while in England. He was about this high,” Brenda gestures down to the ground, “and she, her name was Anne, was this high,” and up to the ceiling. “I kept seeing him around the place and I kept thinking, ‘I’ve seen that face before,’ but I thought he must be the new porter. We were thrown in the deep end in England and so here I was helping to deliver Anne’s baby when Ronnie walked in. I said, ‘What’s he doing here?’ and then under my breath, ‘He’s the porter.’ ‘What?’ was the response. ‘That’s Ronnie Corbett!’” Hoots of laughter ring out, enough to scare away any other marauding hawks.

“I counted the babies I delivered at first, but I stopped at one thousand.” That was her very early days’ count, so the mind boggles at just how many babies have been born on Brenda’s watch. It has never been a well-paid job. “The doctors got paid so much more and often did far less than us. There was one time when I had been with a woman for twenty-six hours and the doctor turned up right at the end and said, ‘Well, what a couple of clever girls you two are.’ He had a piece of fruit toast and a cup of tea and got paid more than I did.” But it has been a job that she says she absolutely loved: “It was all I ever wanted to do.”

Her career brought her back to New Zealand, and most of her working life was spent in Porirua, where Brenda became quite sought-after – especially with gang-affiliated women. “They trusted me I guess and my name would get passed around. That was all quite interesting and an eye opener at times.” Many women insisted on having Brenda as their midwife and she has delivered whole families and even the next generation of those children. “There are many that I am still in touch with and I’ve been asked to come out of retirement a few times.”

Brenda retired fifteen years ago. Now that those days of caring for mums and babies are behind her she has her four cows – “my girls” – and her chooks and ducks to turn her nurturing towards. The motley crew of poultry gather around her now, quacking and clucking, wanting their dinner. Brenda loves this time of the day and is often given a lift a hundred metres down the road to where her feathered friends are housed. She points out the paddocks that are part of the family property. “See that paddock over there with lush grass on that side and rubbish grass on this side? Well the rubbish bit is ours.” More laughter – there is always room for more when Brenda is in full-swing. Chook food is thrown, chicks are checked and legs are stretched. Tonight, Brenda will have dinner with one of her sons – there is a rotating roster and on Tuesdays Brenda ventures to Ōtaki to sing with her singing group.

Brenda’s chosen profession was not a soft one – it was one where backbone and steady nerves were just as important as a decent streak of genuine care for the women. “Women are just amazing and the experience of birth is an incredible thing.” When asked her thoughts on having such a long career in midwifery, Brenda pauses and taps her stick on the ground before announcing, “Well, it hasn’t been a ho-hum life, I suppose.” It’s been a big, on-call, 24/7 kind of life, with many late-night dashes to labouring women. And as for that first baby, born into the hands of an incredulous young Brenda? Well that was the late Roger Freeth, Dr Freeth – a renowned physicist and motorsport racer who sadly died just before he turned forty in 1993. “At every single birth, through all the years, it was always amazing,” says Brenda, “just as it was that first time. Every single time and right until the last one. An incredible thing.”