Midwife on lunch break checks her emails and discovers she has £1million in the bank

A midwife who won £1 million in the lottery 10 years ago is still delivering babies. Ruth Breen, 45, told how she was on her lunch break at the Royal Albert Edward Infirmary in Wigan in 2014 when she checked her emails and discovered she had won the life-changing EuroMillions .

A decade on, the mother-of-one still works for the NHS, although she has enjoyed holidaying in destinations such as Dubai, St Lucia and Mauritius – and wearing Jimmy Choo shoes.

She said: “A lot has changed in the last 10 years, but again, not that much. The win came at the most perfect time yet. It has allowed me to reduce my working time, giving me a much better work-life balance. .

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“I’m very lucky that I only work part-time. This allowed me to spend a lot more time with my daughter, doing fun things for mom, instead of working at a place for a very busy job. We’ve had great holidays, but we’ve tried to keep our feet on the ground and I think work really helps me do that.”

Ms Breen said she wanted to keep working to set an example for her daughter, who was 11 when she won.

She said: “The universe has given me something incredible, but you can’t take it for granted, not everyone is that lucky.”

The community midwife now comes to her visits in a BMW X3, saying the need for boot space prevented her from driving a sportier model, and her first purchase after winning was a pair of Jimmy Choos.

She said: “I almost cried when I was paying for them in Selfridges because I couldn’t believe I could buy this and have the money to do it. It was a bit overwhelming. That collection is a little bigger now, I don’t cry so much anymore!”

Ms Breen still lives in the house she bought just before she won and says most of the new mums she works with don’t know they are being looked after by a millionaire. “I don’t come up and say ‘oh by the way I won a million pounds 10 years ago’, the vast majority of people have no idea and that’s the way I like it,” she said.

“I am treated like any other midwife by patients and staff.”

To mark the 10-year anniversary of her win, Mrs Breen supported charity The Baby Room, which provides essentials for new families in Wigan. She said: “We all know there is a cost of living crisis that has been going on for some time and babies don’t come cheap.

“Not everyone is lucky enough to be able to go out and spend as much on all the equipment they’re going to need to make sure the baby has a safe place to sleep at night or that they have sterilization equipment to make sure that the bottles and teats they use, if they choose to bottle feed, are safe and clean.”

Alison Wakefield, who set up the baby bank in 2022 after giving birth to her youngest child, said: “Without our support we would have children sleeping on the floor, not having a safe space to sleep, we would be had. sleeping in drawers, we would have children who use diapers more than once.

“It is an essential service that is definitely needed. Without us people would go without and babies would go without.”