A WORKING day, or night, for Helen Thorpe, Noellia Reimundez, Suzanne Sidhu and Marie Fletcher means delivering babies.For they all work on Deben Ward at Ipswich Hospital as midwives, as does one of their colleagues, health care assistant Claire Farthing.

A WORKING day, or night, for Helen Thorpe, Noellia Reimundez, Suzanne Sidhu and Marie Fletcher means delivering babies.

For they all work on Deben Ward at Ipswich Hospital as midwives, as does one of their colleagues, health care assistant Claire Farthing.

And though she may not be a midwife herself Claire said she does get to help out. "I sometimes get to hold the legs and things like that."

So imagine their surprise, being in the business of baby production, when one after another they found they were each expecting their own special happy events. Boosting the birth-rate in the past year, it seemed that the Deben had embarked on their own personal baby production programme.

The first baby, Madison, was born at the end of September and the last one to join the gang was Poppy, who arrived at the end of March. In between at regular intervals, Sebastian, Georgia and Thomas also made their debuts.

Suzanne, who had by far the longest labour, was having her first baby, while Claire, an old hand, was having her fourth. And while they all had natural births, four of them took place on the ward where they usually work, four floors up in the maternity block. Only Noellia bucked that trend when she delivered Sebastian on Brook Ward.

Though there was an outside chance that one of them could have ended up as midwife at the birth of one of the others' babies, that didn't happen as most of them were on their own maternity leaves at the crucial times.

Having attended hundreds of live births and delivered dozens of babies Suzanne commented on her experience of being at the other end of the delivery bed for the very first time. She said: "Yes it was pretty weird looking back on it. Usually you are the one in control but I forgot I was a midwife when I had my baby and just let go and let the midwife who was looking after me take over completely."

If you are about to have a baby on Deben ward you might well meet one of them for Helen is already back at work delivering other people's babies and Claire started back at work last Monday.

The question is, are there any other close work colleagues who can top the Deben Five's first class deliver story and beat their record of having five babes between them in six months?

THE DEBEN FIVE

On September 30th 2001 midwife Helen Thorpe gave birth to Madison. She's married to Nathan and they also have a son, Reece, who is two and a half. Madison weighed 8lb 13oz and Helen was in labour for only a couple of hours, it only took 14 minutes to push her out.

Next to be born, three weeks later on September 30th 2001 and weighing in at 6lb 12oz, was Sebastian(CHECK SPELLING WITH JAMES****). His mum is midwife Noellia Reimundez and his dad, William Selby. He is their first child and labour took seven hours.

Round about Christmas there was a bit of a lull and then health care assistant Claire Farthing, who also works on Deben Ward, gave birth to Georgia on February 23rd 2002. She took three hours 35 minutes to be born and weighed 7lb 13oz. She became the first girl in the family as she has three brothers – Lewis, eight; Callum, five and four-year-old Mitchell. Her dad is Kevin Last.

Hot on the heels of Georgia, Suzanne and Sid Sidhu's first baby, Thomas, made his appearance in the world on March 10th 2002. After a labour of around 12 hours, the smallest of the Deben Five, Thomas weighed in at 5lb 9oz.

Finally on March 27th 2002, midwife Marie Fletcher was induced and spent five hours in labour before producing Poppy, her second child. Miss Fletcher weighed in at just a couple of ounces heavier than Thomas – at 5lb 11oz.