It was after I almost died falling off a roof that I decided to train to be a midwife.

I was a roofer doing a repair job 36 feet off the ground when I slipped. I fell and hit a gas pipe on the way down. My right foot shattered, and I broke my left leg, my right arm, and my back in two places. I was in hospital for three-and-a-half months. It was pretty horrific but I’m alive and I can walk. I was so impressed by the people who looked after me, which was one of the reasons I wanted to go into the caring profession.

I chose midwifery because I wanted something life-affirming after my partner’s death. I had lived with her for 15 years when she got lung cancer, and I nursed her until she died five months later. Midwifery appealed to me: it’s a job in which you see the start of new life.

I left school at 15 with no qualifications, so I had to do a one-year access course that would allow me to apply for university. Then I applied to 10 universities in Ireland, where I’m from, and five in England. I got one interview out of the lot and moved from Ireland to London, where I started from scratch in my mid-40s.

I was the only man on the course. On the first day, one of the students thought I was somebody’s husband and wondered why I stayed in the classroom. My tutor told me she didn’t think men should be midwives, because what would they know about women and childbirth? That’s like saying an orthopaedic surgeon has to go and break a few bones before they can know how to repair them. By the end of the course, though, she told me she was revising her attitude.

I’m 50 now and have encountered a certain amount of sexism in my career. I’ve had 118 people – mostly women – refuse to be cared for by me. I have had other patients who were shocked to see a man; there was one who didn’t say anything, but the look of total shock on her face was very funny. Most people assume I’m a doctor when they see me. I have to be very aware of that. My gender is technically irrelevant, but there are underlying perceptions and unconscious attitudes.

It’s such an unusual avenue for men to go into the caring professions. It’s 40 years since men were first allowed to train as midwives in the UK, and they still make up a tiny proportion of the profession. I am one of less than 200 men working as a midwife.

I’ve always had a healthy respect for women, but I have so much more since I became a midwife. You could not do this job if you were a misogynist. I’ll never know what a woman goes through but I see the experiences and challenges that they face during childbirth, and the sheer joy and celebration when a baby is delivered.

Some of the women’s partners are very supportive, and some are quite terrified. Sometimes I pull out a needle and they go weak at the knees and get very squeamish. I tell them to step out for a bit – there’s no shame in it. It can be overwhelming for parents, especially if it’s the first time.

I do think women are too hard on themselves. A lot of women beat themselves up – “I didn’t have the perfect birth”, “I wasn’t able to breastfeed”, “I didn’t do this, I didn’t do that”. You’ve built a human being cell by cell, and that’s amazing! What women do is incredible. You need to honour that. There is no failure in childbirth. If fellas could do it, you wouldn’t hear the end of it. We’d constantly go on about it. I remember one woman who, four hours after giving birth, asked when she could start doing sit-ups. “I’ve got to get this stomach back to normal,” she said. I started laughing, I couldn’t help it.

The birthing game can be full of emotion, and there are highs and lows and everything in-between. It’s an absolute honour to be present and to encourage women to do what they can do. I don’t deliver the baby, the women do that. I’m a cheerleader.

Being a midwife in the NHS is an amazing job, though it is challenging; I’m not going to lie. It doesn’t matter what age you are or what experience you have, you can learn if you want. It’s about your attitude.

Paul Byrne is a midwife at Northwick Park hospital in London

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