Sparks

This chapter explores how newly qualified midwives navigate a persistent sense of what it means to support birth well, an idea often at odds with what they encountered during their clinical education. Their stories reveal how values around physiological birth and woman-centred care are often formed early and carried forward quietly through training. The newly qualified midwives describe navigating environments that left them ethically and emotionally unsettled, yet they remained committed to their goals. Ultimately, it considers how midwives begin to make practice choices that reflect their emerging values, even when doing so requires quiet resistance or uncertainty.