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.

It makes you realise how far we've come. As well as the emotional side, I guess medicine has come such a long way since then so that many more babies can have a quality of life despite any disabilities.

Just seen this episode in Australia. The thalidomide story was very moving and beautifully done.

Yes I was going to say Thalidomide is still used, and I'm sure there was a documentary a few years ago that hinted there were babies that had been affected recently

Thalidomide is used for the treatment of myeloma and myelodysplastic syndrome. You wouldn't believe the paperwork that goes with it, quite appropriately, including monthly pregnancy tests. Men on thalidomide are very strongly advised to use a condom because it isn't clear (and no one obviously wants to do the studies) what effects it might have on pregnancy, even when the mother isn't taking it.

www.macmillan.org.uk/Cancerinformation/Cancertreatment/Treatmenttypes/Biologicaltherapies/Angiogenesisinhibitors/Thalidomide.aspx#DynamicJumpMenuManager_6_Anchor_4

oldraver, was it this you were thinking of? In the babies of mothers on thalidomide for leprosy?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23418102

My MIL was put on a medication for nausea and vomiting when pregnant with DH in the early 70s, that she says was then withdrawn. Scary stuff.

51howdidthathappen

How sad for your family, but how wonderful that your parents defied medical advice and brought her home for her short life.

Love call the midwife!

Trixie does grate on me though!

I don't get the hate for Trixie either...especially as I know the lady she was based upon. She has just retired.....and is nearly 80! Midwife and health visitor and was working as a HV right up until recently. A lot of licence has been taken with her character as she was never a drinker and the storyline is no longer based upon Jennifer Worth's books.

I think the actress who plays her is lovely and comes across as a really nice person.

Loved the recent episode..cried buckets at the end of it when the Dad cuddled the baby. Thought the anamatronic doll was very/scarily lifelike.

Oh yes Alfie Someone upthread said that Susan the baby had a real (or based on a real face) and an animatronic body, she was amazing. I thought the actress who played her Mum was brilliant, I was in tears too.

I get the hate for Trixie, she's too pretty .

Going back to the topic of under crackers I'm not sure how accurate the undergarments were for girls and young women (though probably accurate for older women). I believe they are in 1961 this series. In 1961 I was 18 and even then never wore anything other than a bra and tiny scanty knickers. There was a suspender belt true but by 1964 I and my friends had all switched to tights.

As for the older lady with the prolapse stuffing things like cardboard up her fanny, if you didn't need or want surgery there were proper 'rings' to hold up a prolapse and I can't imagine women not knowing the word vagina in the 1960s. So while the series is accurate in many respects, women weren't quite so ignorant (or so tightly wrapped up in their undergarments) as it suggests I believe, although it may be true of a certain section of women who were not particularly educated.

Also, the point made upthread about unmarried girls always being under the control of their parents and then their husbands, not so sure about that either. It certainly didn't apply to me or my contemporaries. Even my mother left home to work and rented a flat at 18 and that was in the 1920s.

We didn't make it to tights till around 1967, My mother insisted on wearing a roll-on and suspenders more or less forever, and also constantly wore a slip - even if she was wearing trousers. I could never understand the logic of it as it all actually made her look wider round the hips than she actually was.

Grimble I read an interesting book a while ago about the social expectations of women from about 1900 till the seventies and it was basically a back and forth of winning freedoms and losing them again, so might be that you and your mum were both in a winning them swing.

On a bit of a tangent. I was amazed that tights were invented so late. I'd never really thought about it before, but stumbled upon the fact and couldn't believe it.

I remember my mum telling me in the seventies that Thalidomide was prescribed as an anti-emetic, but having looked it up, it was a hypnotic and sedative

I was born in the sixties and my mum told me that she was offered drugs for her morning sickness but thankfully decided against, I always assumed she meant Thalidomide. We moved house when I was five and the little girl next door to us had no arms, only little flippers. I don't think it stopped her doing much in life though, I'd see her carrying her art folder to school and even horse riding. I know she married and had her own children which shows how views changed in a relatively short time.

I thought this episode was done well, though I do want to shake Shelagh sometimes, she can be very patronising and it was agonising the way she dragged out telling Rhoda about Susan.

I have just seen this, what a tear jerker, but I did resist.
And realised now we have scans, so that shock would be very unlikely to happen in this country

It was also horrible that the wife and other children were so dependent on the man "letting" them all continue to have a roof over their heads and food in their bellies due to the fact that he could work no matter what.

They would have been banned from 'his' house. And into a hostel.

All their lives were granted by his 'mercy' in accepting his newborn DD and the scene where he does turned my stomach a bit.

Rhoda should have had the opportunity to tell him to fuck off, but sadly had to appease him.

If CTMW moves forward only three years from 1961 the nurses should be beginning to wear mini skirts when they are not in uniform.

I had a wardrobe full of Mary Quant mini-skirts in 1964, the year she introduced them.

I wait to see if CTMW gets it right! I expect the nuns will have a fainting fit if they do……

Fashion was so brilliant by the mid 60s. By the end of the 60s we had dived into maxi skirts. I had a wardrobe of them too but never did like them as much as the minis

Rivierliedje I think you are probably right about the swings of fashion and lifestyles. It is interesting that the 1920s was another era of really exciting and different fashion. Interesting fashion = interesting lifestyle perhaps? Or perhaps the other way round.

I was a student on a paediatric ward in the 80s and we had a baby with downs and a serious heart condition. his parents had left him at the maternity hospital, so he was in a side room on his own, much like the mullocks baby. he was sleeping on an alarmed pad and we students were told if we heard alarm we were to find a nurse ( as I think he had a DNR) I asked if I could go and cuddle him if I had spare few mins and I was told no don't bother!!!! I was so upset.

also does anyone else notice that the dr keeps holding his stomach is that going to be a story line?

Ladybird that's beyond horrible

I've never noticed that and I've watched all the eps a lot more than once as you can probably guess from my ID I'll keep an eye out.

It's incredible how much things have changed and thank goodness they have. A family member gave birth to a live but very poorly baby in the late 60s and wasn't allowed to see him as it would be easier for her to recover if she didn't. He lived three days and she never set eyes on him.

It's true Shelagh In the hospitals then there was very little idea (or maybe thought they were just being difficult or annoying to the staff) about people's or children's emotions , the fact that even small dcs were not allowed to see their parents beyond the normal visiting hours.

Your poor relative

My mum was offered thalidomide when she was PG with me, but she refused it on the basis of not wanting to take drugs.

I was born in 1962 and my Mum says that she had bad morning sickness when she was pregnant with me. The doctor said they could prescribe something for her but would rather not so she didn't take anything. That could be such a lucky escape! There was one boy at my senior school who was affected - he had one arm that was foreshortened and the hand on that arm wasn't quite right. Despite that I remember he was a very athletic and sporty boy and seemed to have no trouble managing a normal life.

I like Trixie but I still hope Tom and Barbara get together. She is so nice and would be just perfect as a vicar's wife.

Grimble Going back to the topic of under crackers I'm not sure how accurate the undergarments were for girls and young women (though probably accurate for older women). I believe they are in 1961 this series. In 1961 I was 18 and even then never wore anything other than a bra and tiny scanty knickers.

My mum always wore slips (probably still does!) and she was only 6 in 1961! Wouldn't they have been cold without them? The uniform dress and cardi wouldn't be enough in winter without good heating and insulation... (am I the only one who layers up in winter still?!)

Loved cried at the scene with the doctor reading the Lancet to Susan. Not sure about Trixie's rudeness - the bit where she says she's busy at 9 and will go to see sister Julienne at 9.30 just seemed utterly unnecessary. Changing the older nuns' minds about certain things is fair enough, but why be rude, and more importantly why are the writers doing that? Also I find CTM a bit like watching propaganda at points but love it regardless!

Also, need to get this out my system - the Christmas special before last shocked me. I couldn't believe they had the mental health/lobotomy/thinking she was pregnant but was actually menopausal storyline without a helpline at the end, let alone on Christmas day! People from the old asylums are still alive, the NHS does electric shock treatment, the MH system can be pretty brutal still, and there's plenty of women out there who would dearly love children but their mental health has prevented it. I may yet be one of them. That episode really shook me and them all sitting round happily at the end as if it was all ok... it's all ok for the "normal" people but we're supposed to forget the woman who's been utterly devastated? The writers just dropped the storyline there, no vaguely happy ending for her. It's just how it feels irl - people just sort of block out the atrocious things others are going through right next to them, as if those people don't matter.

Sorry, it really upset me as you can tell.

Here's to the rest of the series

the bit where she says she's busy at 9 and will go to see sister Julienne at 9.30

She was going to the doctor with the woman with the prolapse at 9. Im not sure why she didn't just say she had a patient though.

Ah, missed that, soup. And yes, why be so rude? Very odd.