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Kate Yardley
Kate began her career in healthcare in 2014 as an Adult Nurse in the British Army. A passion for providing care to women and reproductive health saw her transfer her skills to midwifery and civilian life, completing a Post Graduate Diploma in Midwifery at the University of Hull in 2020. Since then she has worked as a Registered Midwife within Gloucester NHS Foundation Trust, providing all aspects of antenatal, intrapartum and postnatal care to women and babies at Gloucester Royal Hospital’s Central Delivery Suite.
Kate has a little boy, Ted, with her partner Tom, a British Army Officer, and in March 2023 they welcomed their daughter, Primrose, who was born with undiagnosed OA/TOF. Primrose received her care at Bristol’s St Michael’s Hospital and Bristol Royal Hospital for Children. Primrose was born with short gap OA/TOF and had her corrective surgery when she was a day old. Unfortunately her surgery was unsuccessful and required an emergency repair when she was 1 week old resulting in a very persistent anastomostic stricture requiring multiple oesophageal dilatations.
During this time, Kate and Primrose managed to successfully breastfeed and continue to do so. However this was not a straightforward journey and was at times very challenging, despite one of Kate’s main roles as a midwife being to provide breastfeeding support to women and babies and although she has the experience of breastfeeding her son for 16 months. This led Kate to contact TOFS and work with us to improve the support and information available to OA/TOF babies and families, surrounding feeding breastmilk and breastfeeding.
Kate plans to complete her MSc in Midwifery in September 2024 by furthering this work and undertaking a piece of research into the experiences of mothers who breastfeed OA/TOF babies.
