SHE cycled out in the dead of night with all she needed to bring a baby into the world, packed into a small bag.

Sally O’Connor was midwife to pregnant women in 1950s Birmingham and out in the rural districts of Worcester.

And all she and her colleagues had to rely on was their medical bags and nursing nous, in an age before scans and mobile phones.

Now aged 79, the grandmother of 10 first learned midwifery in 1958 at the now-closed Sorrento Maternity Hospital in Moseley, Birmingham.

Sally lived in the nurses’ home on the Anderton Park Road site and quickly made friends with the girls on her corridor. Many, like her, were from Ireland where she had left from five years earlier to train as a nurse.

She also became a part of the lives of her patients, working first at Sorrento and then out of Worcester on her bike.

“I met some really nice women,’’ she said.

‘‘I even went to one of the christenings for a baby I delivered.

‘‘You became their friends – they would rely on you, they would trust you.

“The first birth I ever saw was absolutely wonderful.