With more than 60 years experience between them, midwives Sarah Reale and Ruth McCall have delivered more babies than they can even make a guess at.

To mark International Day of the Midwife this Sunday, the two Carlisle midwives are looking back on their careers and reflecting about how the profession has changed.

Both now work as community midwives, supporting women through their pregnancies, during births and providing postnatal support. Being there all the way through means they build up a strong relationship with the women they look after.

Sarah, 59, who lives in Carlisle, is about to retire after about 28 years.

More than two decades of this was in the Harraby and Botcherby areas, where she has supported generations of women through pregnancy and birth. “My babies are now having babies. I’m looking after women, having looked after their mothers.

“I loved it there. I looked after sisters, mothers - whole families. I knew everyone. I still see people and remember them,” she said.

“I saw one woman a few weeks ago and she’d had a baby. When she told me the name I knew she’d named her after her mother.”

Born in Carlisle, at the city’s old maternity hospital, she completed her nursing training here then moved to Liverpool. She then got into midwifery by accident, after a geriatric ward she was working on closed and she was given the opportunity to try something different.

Sarah said she found her calling, and has never looked back. “We moved back to Carlisle because my husband got a job here, and have been here ever since,” she said.

Although the role is the same in many ways, she said a lot has changed in 28 years.

“The thing that has made our job so much easier is the mobile phone. Back then, when you went out in the community you had a little bleeper. If that went off you had to find the nearest phone box, so you always had to have change, and ring to find out where you were needed.”

On the flipside, she said there is a lot more paperwork to fill in nowadays. “When I first started women were given a little card and that was their notes,” she recalled.

Yet she said the ethos has never changed. “If you watch Call the Midwife a lot has changed but that soul is still there, that kindness. That’s what I always tell student midwives - yes be knowledgeable, but above all, be kind.”

Getting ready for retirement, she said she couldn’t have wished for a better career. “I love being a midwife. I love the women I look after with all my heart. They are amazing - their strength, courage and bravery,” she said.

Ruth, 59, from Caldbeck, has been in the profession for 34 years, training as a midwife while serving in the Army.

She was stationed in Germany for a while, looking after British wives, and later worked around the south of England - including at Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey when Sophie, Countess of Wessex, gave birth to her two children there.

Having married a Cumbrian, she eventually moved up to Carlisle. “I’ve been here long enough that I am seeing people having their second and third babies,” she said.

Aside from technology Ruth said the profession has moved on in other ways. “There are lots of things we do now that would have been seen as rather wacky 30 years ago. Things like water births, skin-to-skin after a baby is born and encouraging women to be upright and move around during labour,” she explained.

“It is much more women-centred. They have a lot more choice and we spend a lot more time making sure they have the information to make informed choices.”

She added that women spend a lot less time in hospital, while midwives now come straight into the profession with a degree.