RELATED STORY: Health ministers 'working' to save private homebirthsRELATED STORY: A baby emerges, screaming, into the lightRELATED STORY: Almost a fifth of midwives 'suffering PTSD', study finds
In a profession dominated by women, Christian Wright is used to the occasional pregnant pause when he tells people he is a midwife.

Mr Wright is the first male midwife in the 25-year history of the Family Birth Centre at Perth's King Edward Memorial Hospital (KEMH).

"A lot of people are surprised initially — it's not something they expect — but they seem to love me, and I've had so many requests from other women asking for me to be their midwife and from their partners as well," he said.

"I think they appreciate my background, they appreciate me, I include them as part of the care.

"I recently did a research study on how we treat male partners and found that a lot of them feel excluded … so there's a big push that I do especially to try to include them as a family unit.

"So I don't really find any resistance."

Mr Wright comes from a background in emergency nursing and said being a midwife at the KEMH centre — designed for women with low-risk pregnancies who prefer to give birth in a home-like setting — was the best job he had done.

"We do all of their antenatal care and then we're on call 24 hours a day, and so we do their labour and birth as well," he said.

"Afterwards, we visit them in their home for up to five days and if they need any extra support we go longer.

"We come from this paradigm where it's like a marathon — it's not a medical event — it's a marathon that you train for and you get ready and you achieve it together.

"And at the end I'm just standing back and they are doing it, we've done our job and that's just really rewarding."

From midwife to wedding guest

Mr Wright assisted in the delivery of Sonya McQuire's two children, two-year-old Archer and three-week-old Imogen.

Ms McQuire said he was an "amazing" midwife and she never felt uncomfortable about his gender.

"We got questioned a bit when we were telling people. Family were really supportive, obviously it was our choice," she said.

"But we were never uncomfortable at all."

Ms McQuire said Mr Wright also helped to involve her husband, Jaime, in the birth.

"He doesn't quite get the whole birth thing, as a lot of males don't, but Christian really made him get involved and throughout the whole process made sure Jaime was comfortable with what we were hoping to achieve with the birth," she said.

"It would be good if there were more male midwives. It does make it more relatable to the partners and a better experience."

Ms McQuire said her family had developed a close relationship with Mr Wright after the birth of Archer, and he even attended their wedding last year.

"We consider him a good friend, not just a midwife," she said.

The learning curve: 'It blew my mind'

Mr Wright, who has been named as one of the finalists in the 2018 WA Nursing and Midwifery Excellence Awards in the Graduate of the Year category, said he went into the profession with the aim of one day working in developing countries.

"I've worked in East Timor and I've done some work in remote areas in Australia, in communities, and I just love it," he said.

"I love being with the community, with people in their setting … I just really love investing in people and seeing what they can achieve."

Mr Wright said he believed the reason so few men went into midwifery was because they did not understand it.

"It's a course taught by women, for women, about women, and I really struggled for the first six months," he said.

"But when I realised what I was learning, it blew my mind.

"I think if more guys understood what it was, they would be coming into it."

Not just 'women's business'

Statistics from the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia show that at the end of December, there were 40 men registered as a nurse and midwife in WA as their principal place of practice, and 467 across Australia.

Another 17 men were registered as midwives alone across Australia, with none in WA.

Edith Cowan University associate professor and associate dean of midwifery, Sara Bayes, said it was a profession that struggled to attract men, with some continuing to view it as "women's business".

"We probably have one or two per cohort in both of our programs here," Dr Bayes said.

"The guys who do come into it have a really strong reason for doing it, and that might be that they've had not such a great experience themselves, that they have a genuine wish to support women through a life changing experience or they have very practical reasons, like they might want to go and work for RFDS [the Royal Flying Doctor Service] and that is one of the skills that they need."

"The term midwife means 'with woman'," she said.

"It doesn't mean that a woman has to care for you in labour or birth or through your pregnancy.

"Our experience of the guys who we've graduated through our university is that they have been excellent, sensitive carers, good advocates for women, good advocates for dads.

"They are all good reasons why we should have more."