Call The Midwife

[Daffodilly]

I'm sure after the Christmas special they said a new series would be starting in the New Year. So where is it?? [impatient]

My dad talks about playing on bomb sites too, MrsDV. At the age of six when they were sent out for hours on their own. Truly a different era!

I wish the other midwife (the quiet mousey ish one) would get some big storylines though.

Didn't she have the one about the cot death? When she was desperately worried it was her fault?

I think a baby died at birth with cynthia I might be wrong but she did have a good story and she once stood up to a bully of a man, but yes she needs to be in it more jennys simpering gets on my wick

Jenny gets right up my nose at times.

The scene with the Mum running with the baby who was fitting made me cry............ I went through something similar when ds2 fitted aged three weeks. The GP came who was a family friend, he said not to wait for an ambulance but to go straight to the hospital. DH got us 25 miles to hospital in just under half an hour. I grabbed ds2 and ran screaming into the hospital with him. Swarms of doctors and nurses appeared and we were so well looked after. He had a MRI scan and most awful of all a lumbar puncture. We never found out why he fitted but he still has absent seizures occasionally now along with his other problems.

Jenny is the least sympathetic character in the show, which is odd, as she is the central character. I think it is the actress to be honest.

Not the actress, AnneEyhtMeyer Jennifer Worth struck me as being very like that, very straight talking.

I've read the books, it isn't the straight talking, it is the sneery manner that gets me. She seems so condescending. She was the same in Dr Who.

Jennifer Worth struck me as someone who had no particular vocation for midwifery, which is why IMO she comes across as unsympathetic.

She just seems so up herself really. Not sure if it's the character or the actress.

I thought it was more that because she is the narrator, she's describing what she observes and other people, not herself. So there's no real sense of Jenny; the writers have had to make her up.

Of course they have now gone beyond the books anyway.

Loved Miranda Hart in this episode.

I love this programme; the only slight fault was probably the pies that Chummy made and burnt (they looked like they were straight out of Greggs or somewhere!). I know we saw her making the puff pastry,but IMO she would've made one large one for everyone

I like the Jenny Worth character too (a lot of nurses and MW's would've been from the MC so maybe a bit snobby but she isn't really.)

I suppose if I had come out of a MC background and found myself in 50s/60s poplar I might have gotten a bit of a culture shock.

I do love the program despite its faults

One thing that did annoy me re the jenny character in sundays episode was when the senior midwife commented on the baby 'failing to thrive' and Jenny shouted her down saying it was an outdated concept!!

Totally unacceptable way to speak to a senior nurse let alone a nun imo

I'm a nurse and if I told my line manager in a shouty way that she was using outdated terminology I would expect to pulled up on it.

And I think (know from personal experience of a friend) that they were still using that phrase (failure to thrive) until very recently. If they've stopped using it (which I believe they have finally ?) then I'm very glad.

DS is 4 and he was failure to thrive! I wasn't aware it wasn't used now.

Failure to thrive is still used now I have heard it said loads of times,

i say loads i meant a few times. I think what jenny snippiley meant is that the boy s did have an illness , failure to thrive means they don't know what is wrong

My friend was upset by the "failure" part, she felt it meant she'd done something wrong as a mother, or implied that.

it is a really harsh phrase isn't it

I just pointed that I had been taking DS to the surgery everyday for 3 weeks. The failure was on their part for not thinking oh a young baby not taking his feeds or vomiting them up straight away, screaming constantly might have reflux/milk allergy.

After that DS got gaviscon and I've been wary of HVs since.

It's a crap phrase though.

I meant to say i have one of those pie dishes that chummy had except mine is bigger i make my roast potatoes in it they are amazing even if i do say so myself, it was my nans

Quite right TheNight - I'm sure no criticism is meant, it's just medical language. I tried to help my friend see it that way.

People did wear trousers out of the home. My mum and granny started wearing them during the war and my granny (b 1883) only wore skirts after that for weddings and funerals. She had a knitted bag in her trousers for her hearing-aid batteries (her lap was very uncomfortable). She used to wear a tie all the time too...