Call the Midwife is back!

[PolkadotsAndMoonbeams]

This Sunday (17th) at 8pm on BBC1.

I enjoyed the Christmas special - it was good to see Delia back, and I think there's going to be a nice romance with Tom and Barbara

The - it looks like we are going to get a thalidomide story.

she cant live there,she would be finished in 2yrs

Trixie made a mistake. She was teetering anyway, the breakup sent her over the edge. Now she is much more stable, much more capable. #TeamTrixieandTom.

Looks interesting for next week

but to move on with her friend and colleague?!

i dont understand why she moved to the flats,seemed very sad

Better hygiene

Tom and Barbara are a much better couple and far more realistic.

Priority for better housing, to help keep her well Seaside.

ok just seems like she would hate that type of living

Oh Tom & Barbara sounds like the Goodlife,i can see Trixie as Margo

I agree that Tom and Barbara are well suited but still feel it's a betrayal for Trixie.

If my friend got together with my ex if be fuming!

that was a good episode, can't believe how abysmally women were treated in fairly recent history Given that I had my dd on my own and have been able to work and support us both it really hits home how things have changed.

Although still a long way to go in terms of equality and stigma.

I was pretty much completely ignorant about typhoid

Oh i think Tom and Barbara make a good match, Trixie was a fool to let him go and can't be that surprised that he would get another girlfriend as he is a pretty good catch

IAmAPaleontologist the issue wasn't the lack of a legal abortion. If she had been allowed to stay in her accomadation, keep her job and not been treated as a leper I very much doubt she would have aborted her baby.
It is very sad the situation she found herself in , thankfully women in this country now will never be in that situation.

Being fairly new to this series - how long ago did these kind of nun led midwifery care plans finish? Were they common in many places?

And I'm still shocked women weren't allowed to teach post marraige, or during/after pregnancy still once the marraige but was ok. Shocking.

AndNow the issue was all of those things, including lack of safe legal abortion.

It always moves me to think that things like this were happening only a few decades ago. Something similar happened to someone in my family. A young educated professional in the teaching/nursing sphere, she was forced to leave her job and accommodation when she got pregnant. In her case she came back home, her parents were so ashamed they bundled her off to a home for unmarried pregnant women (aka 'fallen women'), and straight after the birth the baby was adopted. I found out the family secret by accident, and recently I came across the baby's birth name while doing our family tree. That all happened in 1961 too ( the pregnancy, not doing the genealogy). The way she was treated was shocking.

Does anyone know why she would have been given a hysterectomy? :( Is it because the injury was so bad or was it just a thing that they did back then?

Sad. And I'm feeling mixed because it's not nice to have a depressing episode, but I felt the whole feeling of it was more realistic. Some of the attitudes etc rather than being so unbelievable.

BTW - to the poster who asked why they didn't revive older buildings rather than just building new tower blocks, IIRC this was in the original books, and most of those old tenements were structurally unsound, partly due to damp/mould, some older building styles which wouldn't have adhered to any codes, and partly due to bomb damage from the war, plus wear and tear which hadn't been addressed during the war years or after because the budget was too tight or the focus was on rebuilding. None of them had running water let alone electricity - I think some had gas, maybe? - so would have been a massive job to get all of that set up. Obviously, they were built without bathrooms, so that would have had to have been converted. A lot of them were infested with vermin, either the bugs which were featured in the series 1 story (which wasn't anywhere near as skin-crawly or horrifying as it was in the book, actually) or rats, mice, cockroaches, woodworm. Because of the layouts of the buildings it would have been impossible to clear these infestations.

It was easier, safer and cleaner to build new tower blocks and knock the old buildings down.

Crayon no the implication was she had an abortion out of desperation.

I think she had the hysterectomy because she injured herself, someone said she pierced something?

Well yes, but now a lot of stigma is removed, plus we have safe legal abortion, and women often choose abortion.

I am a bit confused about the not being allowed to teach post marriage/pregnancy.

DM was a teacher and got married in 1953. She continued to teach until she had me in 1964 and didn't go back to teaching till I was 5 - so 1969. I thought that was because she was at home looking after me, but maybe it was because she wasn't allowed to teach?

I was smacked by a married pregnant teacher in 1959. I know because my mum complained to the school and that was the reason they gave for her cruelty (I was 8 or 9 a very good frightened little girl, who had got 2 maths corrections wrong ).

I know all the reasons why they knocked down SOME of the old houses Bertie But there were some residents ( i saw a telly programme on about it) who got together and made the councils give, or loan, them the money they would've spent on the high rise flats that were earmarked for that specific area. Those repaired modernised flats and houses are still going strong while the 'wonderful' erections high rises are being knocked down.

They just built new slums in the skies (not always of course).

Agree Tom and Barbara are much better matched.

I have a family friend who was treated disgracefully when she was just 16 and pregnant by an older married man. She hated the nuns in her unmarried mothers' home they were physically and emotionally abusive.

She pierced herself with a bent coat hanger,so it must have caused such internal damage she needed a hysterectomy. So sad. My mum told me a friend of hers used a knitting needle on herself, more than once. She told mum it was a lot safer than a coat hanger!

OMG Clawdy surely she wouldn't have been able to walk at all after that, she'd have bled to death in the hostel

I really enjoyed last nights episode as much more realistic/less twee, although it was very sad. I'm not convinced we've seen the end of the typhoid story (or that the suspected source was correct). I'm a bit suspicious about the jam that everyone seemed to be consuming (kids and ?Stan were having jam butties, elderly Sister/nun (her name escapes me) polished off a whole jar and handy man (minty from Eastenders) was handing out jars from his allotment. He mentioned being in North Africa where I'm sure typhoid was rife so could he not also be a carrier? If it's him who made the jam I don't know if the typhoid bugs/spores would be killed in the cooking process? Then again I'm probably overthinking this way too much......