Was nursing and midwifery really like call the midwife??

[Goingforplatinum]

I've been rewatching call the midwife on Iplayer and would love to have been a nurse like they show on screen.
As a nurse for the last 10 years I hate my job, I spend 5 minutes with a patient and 20 minutes writing about them, that's not why I went into nursing. They seem to have so much time for each patient they see and not overrun with paper work and constantly covering their back.
Was that really what nursing was like back then??

My DM told me of her friend who was slapped by a MW during labour for making too much fuss. This would have been very early 1960s, so the same period CTM covers now. So not that idylic.

A lot of my family members were midwifes or nurses in East end London in the 60s and all have said it was like that.

Yes, same here.

Not uk, but Ds was only born in spring 2020, peak covid era. I still had midwife scheduled to come to me every day for 6 weeks!

In the end She came every day for 5 days after, then every few days, once a week etc.. for 6 weeks as we had no issues and daily seemed a bit ott. On the days she came she stayed 1hr at least, sometimes 2hrs. And would help bath baby and check cord and health stuff, sat 20-30 mins through entire breastfeeds to check latch and how well baby fed, checked my health. Etc…
The normal hospital stay after birth is still 7days.

I'm not a nurse or midwife but an AHP, working for the NHs even in my working life things have got more and more pressured and less personal in the health service. 15 years ago I was working in a community role when we could see referred patients regularly every month or 3 weeks for up to a year - it was for a long term condition and we did local clinics in gp surgeries. We got to know patients, rapport was really good and there were demonstrable improvement in conditions which increased the longer and more regularly people attended appointments. Then funding was reduced - we saw people less often, for only six months, and in fewer locations. In the end, the service lost its funding, there's no NHS support now for this condition in our area any more. In my current job, we are so stretched I rarely see people more than once or twice, my house mainly signposting to online advice. It's really sad.

I had ds in 2014 and the midwife came round everyday for 5 days after the birth, same lady aswell. Then was discharged to the hv.
I am now 13 pp and two midwives popped in the day after my c section then I had to go to the local hospital on day 5 for baby to be weighed and that was that. Can't believe how much has changed in so little time !
Also didn't fancy a mission to the hospital with the baby 5 days post op!

When I trained as a midwife (80's) we had a book of "Midwives Rules". They were very specific about certain things, including that a new mother must be visited twice a day for the first three days and daily until the tenth day and the temperature recorded at each visit, and further visits up to 28 days at the midwife's discretion.

If this mother had been visited on her second postnatal day, if her temperature had been recorded, maybe her life would have been saved.

I think it's a great shame mothers don't get this level of care any more, and I'm surprised there aren't more serious consequences (or ones we hear about).

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/jun/07/familyandrelationships

It was written in stone - in the Midwives Rules! @lipstickwoman

My sisters and I were born in nursing homes in the 60s. I imagine them to be like the ones in CTM. Apparently you only got sent to the main hospital if you were predicted to have a difficult birth.

I remember nurses in the 70s wearing those caps made of card. A single stripe on the cap meant that they were a first year student nurse and so on.

I had DD in 2020, had her at 9pm discharged next morning at 9AM. Saw midwife at home next day for 10 mins and went clinic 5 days later to get her weighed. That was it. Had a couple of calls from HV but didn't see her in person till the 1 year review. I would of loved the care of how it used to be, sounds amazing.

@FannyCann I wanted to say 10 days but that sounded too far fetched lol.

I worked in a country area and in truth quite a few visits involved sitting chatting with farmer's wives over a cup of tea. And some women would beg for a day off as they really didn't need to see us, so we did start doing check in phone calls occasionally.

No wonder trust bosses wanted those rules rewritten to reduce costs allow more discretion around visits, but alas it has meant the decimation of postnatal care.

Mastitis, DVT, PE - all complications found on midwife visits and prompt treatment arranged (to name a few). Now mothers are left wondering if they should seek help, and then fighting to get through to the gp practice or trying to get through to 111.

And I remember arranging for one mother to be readmitted to our community hospital for breastfeeding support - the baby hadn't been gaining weight, but with round the clock support things soon picked up. It was lovely to be able to do that. I don't know how anyone succeeds with breastfeeding now - don't forget women would be in hospital for at least three days and often longer if it was LSCS or other problems back then.

I trained in the 70s and there were similarities.

It was weirdly stricter AND more relaxed.

We were on the wards as part of the team after the initial 6 weeks in school. And by the end of the first year, so still 18, we were left in charge of wards at night with 2 sisters ward rounds in 11 hours. Also, reports, unless there were major changes were often around 2 to 3 lines per patient.

On the other hand I got bollocked for playing games with a 10 year old boy on an adult male ward (not sure why he was on there). The men had got him all wound up and then wanted to rest so I was doing a jigsaw with him to distract him from being a pest and was told to do something useful i.e. sterilise the bed pans. So definitely not all good.

my mum was a community midwife in exactly that area at that time. She was treated so terribly she had to live in with her supervising midwife and her letchy husband. She had come from very rural ireland to do nursing and at that time you were not considered a proper nurse unless you also had midwifery.
I remember going shopping with her and being stopped every few minutes as everyone knew her and wanted to talk!!

I met a wonderful lady in her 90s who was a midwife in Poplar at the beginning of her career - she said the programme was a sanitised version of the truth. That matches my ex-H’s memories, he was born nearby in the early 60s and I was fairly horrified by his description of their living conditions (an outside toilet shared between 4 families, tin bath in front of the fire, damp and mould ). He seemed to have fond memories of the very colourful characters in his neighbourhood despite his family’s poverty.

When my mum had my (older) sister in the sixties (home birth), the midwife had a migraine so lay on the bed beside my mum!
She did recover enough to deal with the actual delivery.

the house we lived in in Stepney had no bathroom and we shared with three other irish families.
We were all the same so didn't know any different really .
My mum used to bring my youngest brother on her rounds and leave him in the car!! Imagine!! Think call the midwife is very rose coloured specs

Thank goodness that attitudes to still births and neonatal deaths have changed. Parents encouraged to hold and spend time with their babies. Not just wrapped up and taken away and never mentioned again. Poor women and fathers. 😰

@FannyCann

When I trained as a midwife (80's) we had a book of "Midwives Rules". They were very specific about certain things, including that a new mother must be visited twice a day for the first three days and daily until the tenth day and the temperature recorded at each visit, and further visits up to 28 days at the midwife's discretion.

I had my DC in 1978, 1981 and 1986 and this is the treatment I had. When I had DC1, standard procedure was to keep you in hospital for a week. I signed myself out two days early and had to sign a form to say I'd done it against medical advice, but I was climbing the walls!

Second and third child I had under what was then called the domino scheme (domiciliary, in and out) - I was home within three hours of delivering DC2, and within six hours of delivering DC3. The midwife came every day for the first ten and the HV after that.

My daughter had her two DCs in 2016 and 2019. C-section with DC1 but she was sent home the next day and I don't recall the midwife visiting more than two or three times though I was staying at her house at the time. Same with DC2, though she had an awful VBAC delivery and was in hospital for the two days it took. Again, don't recall the midwife visiting the way I was visited.

I've worked in general practice (non clinical) for 32 years. Yes it was like that.

I have a friend who is a retired nurse. She is 84 and started nursing in the late 1950s. She recently gave a talk about her experiences and confirmed that a lot of the issues featured in CTM were pretty accurate, especially the back street abortions.

Girliefriendlikespuppies
I've been a community nurse for 20 years and there's still lots of things I recognise in CTM.

In what way? I did the community for 12 months, but again the afternoons where spent in the office on a computer, although I did feel I had more time and connection with patients on the community then I did in the hospital.

Similarities;

Going into all types of homes and seeing some things that are really shocking. Even after 20 years I can still walk into a house and be taken aback for one reason or another.

Being there when patients are at the end of their life, getting to know the family and them getting to know you.

Being a Jack of all trades (although not to the extent of CTM!)

Had my first baby in 2014.

Birth was traumatic but ultimately ok. Discharged from hospital and came home with this tiny baby and no idea what to do. I was exhausted, in pain, and completely overwhelmed. DP was also shellshocked.

The midwives came every day for I can't remember how long. A few weeks? I'm not sure. But oh my goodness how I loved those visits. Without a doubt the high pint of my day. They were so, so lovely and I can remember feeling very spoilt and well looked after.

It felt to me very much like a CTM experience. From their point of view though, there was obviously a lot of paperwork and stress etc but I never saw any of that. They made me feel like me and my baby were the only things that mattered and that they had all the time in the world for me.

Hats off to them, and all midwives out there doing a wonderful job.

Tha sort of thing has always happened I think.

My friend was yelled at by her midwife for "making all that noise, quiet down" when she was screaming with the pain during labour a couple of years ago. Dreadful.

I agree the maternity home in particular sounds lovely. Life has become so atomised these days; I do long for the sense of community from the CTM days. Also lived and worked around Poplar for a long time - it was a few years ago, but I would always think of the show when I was going about my business.

@Singleandproud your town sounds exactly like mine in 2009 when I had DS1. Spoilt for choice with Surestart centres and stay and plays and so much support. Incredible support. But admittedly it was exactly as David Cameron said, used by very middle-class mums. Don't know why that was a bad thing, surely all mums need support regardless.