From Midwife to Designer- Why I changed career
Hello my lovely followers,
How is the mood on this first day of December ? Hope you are all staying connected to your friends, families and colleagues ?
Thought I am doing a blog post today about the reasons of my career change. I am often getting asked about my story and my journey from being a midwife in Germany to being a designer in UK.
When you are expecting to read something like: “Oh, I always was interested in design, my parents were architects and builders and it was always my dream to do something design related…..” I have to disappoint you. Really sorry.
I grew up in an ordinary household with a mother being at home and caring for me and my twoelder sisters and a father being a chemist and working for the government as an expert for pesticides use in the farming industry. We are a musical family and my parents offered us the great opportunity to learn several instruments and encouraged us to join them listening to concerts and different kind of music.
My father was very creative in his garden. He cultivated an allotment twenty minutes away from our main home and pretty everything we ate came from this garden. I really think that this garden work was and still is his own hideaway That means, that we as children spent hours, days,… in this garden, helping him sowing, watering, weeding and harvesting. I climbed trees and raised baby birds with broken wings .
My mother showed us how to appreciate the little things in life. She was more into details and always decorated the house with seasonal things. She always mentioned something like: “ Look at this amazing light today” or “ Have you seen that little flower over there” She really opened my eyes for these small daily presents nature had to offer.
But I myself was never interested in art or crafts. My sisters were knitting and sewing, but I preferred to go to the scouts to learn about how to light a fire in the woods and how to survive in nature without all the luxury goodies. I loved being together with my friends. I had no patience with the crafts at all. Instead I was interested in people and helping people. I did several voluntary internships in hospitals during my school life and soon discovered the work of midwifes there. I still can remember the excitement and the deep respect I felt while joining and watching the birth in the delivery room for the very first time.
I wanted to become that person, that accompanies pregnant women and families before, during and after birth. I wanted to be a midwife!
After three years training and at the age of 21 I started working in a big hospital in Cologne/Germany. In some nights I had to care for 5 women under labour- parallel !!! I had to connect with different types of people from various backgrounds very quickly and I had to make decision in the case of emergencies or difficulties. Jumping from room to room I often was totally exhausted after these long shifts. But the reward was most of the time amazing.
I got married aged 23 and I, myself, gave birth to five children within seven years. We moved to Oldenburg, a smaller town in the North of Germany and there I worked as a freelance midwife, making home visits at new parent’s houses.
Actually at was during this time, that my interest in interiors and architecture developed. We had Swedish neighbours at this time and they had baskets of Swedish interior magazines in their living room. While I was breastfeeding my own children I read them all. Inspired by those magazines I bought one book after the other about design history , architecture etc. We decided to buy our first house for the rising family and I spent days researching the right flooring, the right colours, the right materials. I did rough sketches, floorpans and created mood boards- and I had really fun while doing that.
After our fifth child celebrated his second birthday I started working back in hospital again , working shift with my husband caring for the kids on the weekends. The insurance rates for freelance midwifes in Germany were dramatically increasing during that time. I mean, the salary for a midwife was low anyway , very low !!!!, especially in respect of the huge amount of responsibility a midwife has. The additional insurance costs broke many necks of my colleagues and I started to question whether this profession got enough appreciation and why politicians didn't react, although there were a lot of strikes and a lot of talks between midwife’s associations and the government . I spend hours on these strike days, hoping that politic would act and increase the salaries. In fact, they didn’t - hospitals closed down delivery wards, because they didn’t make money enough.
I lost one job this way , but was fortunate to directly get another one, but there the discussions were the same. It was all about lowering costs, letting midwives, nurses and doctors work longer. Within 2 years me and my colleagues accumulated thousands of overtime hours. My mobile phone rang often at home with a colleague asking for help. Don’t forget, I had five children between five and 12 years to that time and a husband who was working long hours during the week while building up his own company. I didn’t want to let my colleagues down, but I also didn’t want to sacrifice my family.
Beginning of 2016 I decided to quit my job and take a sabbatical year. I wanted to spend more time with my family at the weekends and I wanted time for myself after these years of caring for five children and serving families in hospital. And I took this time.
I am not regretting that. It was a fabulous year and I spent hours walking in nature in the morning- just thinking! I was 39 to that time , our first children were already teenager and I really started thinking about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, how I wanted to spend my daily hours and what else was interesting me next to being a midwife. I finishes a building project on Mallorca/Spain for family members, which I had started 2014 and I realised that building and creating spaces had really become my second passion next to serving and connecting with people.
And slowly the idea grew to end my life as a midwife and start something new. I considered to go to university in Germany to gain a degree in interior architecture, but I was deterred by the duration. I didn’t want to spend years at university with still young kids at home.
I remember exactly that day, when I found THE INTERIOR DESIGN SCHOOL LONDON in the internet. They offered a One Year Diploma Course for people with various backgrounds. There are a few of these schools in London, but this school seemed to be different- smaller classes, open for career changers, more personal.
I spoke with my husband. He was full of support and together we spoke with our children. Could they imagine to join their mum going to London for one year? I will never forget what my kids answered: “ Mummy, you did everything for us the last years and now we are doing something for you. London , that’s cool!”
I applied for a place and was accepted for the course 2017/2018.
Our plan was to go to London for one year!
L O N D O N - Are you kidding me????
This is a question I heard quite a lot of times before we actually moved. People found it hard to see, that I changed my life. Some friends and some family member couldn’t understand why I took , in their eyes, such a risky decision. Why would I take the kids out of their school? Why would I leave my husband back in Germany ? Why would I leave my friends ? Why actually would I do a change at all?
But I had also friends who encouraged me, you supported me and who believed in my ability to decide the best for my family and me.
I wanted that change, I wanted to stretch myself and our kids. They had been raised in a safe and ordinary small village in northern Germany, with loving parents and great friends. They never had to suffer, they never had really difficult times in their lifes. In our eyes it was time to show them the world, to challenge them and to experience something totally news together as a family.
Our three girls at the Notting Hill Carnival
I found a rental house, I found schools and in summer 2017 we moved to London with my husband commuting every weekend, because he had to stay with his own company. We know that we could handle that. It would be a change, but we could do it.
The next 12 month flew by. I spend every day from 10am to 5pm at THE INTERIOR DESIGN SCHOOL LONDON , learning, learning, learning. I learnt a lot!!!!!! Taking into account that I couldn’t safe a digital file properly before , I had to learn everything . By the end of that year I was able to follow the design process, define the brief, create a mood board, draw floorpans/ elevations/sections digitally and by hand. I learned how to draw three dimensional and was introduced to CAD, Sketch Up and Photoshop. I prepared and designed complete interior schemes and learnt how to present them to a wider audience. It was an amazing time, but it was also tough. Luckily my creative ideas came very easily, but ,after 6 month, while learning all the digital stuff, I had a few weeks where I was really frustrated about my former digital inability. I cried tears of hard frustration, but I also worked harder, during night time, while the kids were in bed, stomping through the mud- and finally got it.
Presentation Board at school
Luckily we had amazing weekends in London. My personal rule was to work hard during the week and to relax with my family at the end. We discovered London with all it’s amazing opportunities. We lived next to Portobello Road and every Saturday we spend hours on the flea market, eating Morocan ,Mexican or Thai food. We walked in Hyde Park and went shopping in Camden…. The list ist endless.
The kids were happy at their schools. Our youngest boy, who couldn’t speak one word English before, developed great and spoke fluently after a few months. But they all had their own challenges, for sure. They needed to learn how to adapt , how to make new friends, how to handle different cultures, how to behave on the street in the evenings … They saw numbers of homeless, street fights, burglaries . But they all fell in love with this city. London is amazing!!!! The vibe, the flow, the possibilities !!!!
On graduation day
In June 2018 I got my Diploma in Interior Architecture and Design and I can’t tell you how proud I was and still be. Two of my best friends joined my family on Graduation Day and it was a very special moment in my life, for sure. Without my amazing family and without the support of my friends I never could have done that. But the biggest THANK YOU is belonging to my husband, who always believes in me and who always is strengthening me with his love.
Taking this step was one of the best decisions in my life. After this year I knew that I belong into the design world, because design is all about people. And here is the bridge to being a midwife. Connecting with people, listening to people and understanding their needs- that is what my biggest strength is.
But, wait a minute, haven’t I said that the plan was to stay only for one year in UK and then go back to Germany? Yes, that was the plan. But plans are there to be changed sometimes .
I will write about the reasons why we stayed in UK in one of the next posts, because this one really got too long. Sorry guys and congrats, if you made it til the end. Normally I try to keep posts shorter, but this part of my life is an important one and whoever wanted to hear the story : here you have it :-) Thanks a lot for reading this story.
And at the end I will tell you what I learned from this experience:
Whatever you want to achieve- you can achieve it by believing in yourself, working hard and never losing your vision.
Don’t listen to people who don’t understand your vision and who don’t want you to move forward , because they are scared of moving themselves and want you to stay ordinary.
Trust and believe in your children - they are widely capable.
Don’t underestimate the power of a pause! Without my sabbatical I wouldn’t have figured out what I really want in my life.