if you want to be a midwife then do it because if your not doing something you truly want then you may end up regretful and drop out, thus (as pointed out above with the longer route too) wasting valuable baby delivering time. your constantly learning in your midwifery career, being sent to different courses and refreshing your training so youl be a competent midwife anyway and youl know everything relevant to the job. the only advantage of doing nursing before is that you have more directions to go in but as before if you want to be a midwife then the path is pretty clear.