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.

Agree about the sweetness of the doc reading to Susan. I didn't see the Christmas episode. It sounds awful actually. For your situation. elementofsurprise.

IMO Trixie was maybe feeling too dominated by the nuns and wanted to assert herself.

My half brother's mum (we have the same father but different mums. My dad his first wife (half brother's mum) had divorced before my parents met, and my mum brought up my dad's 2 boys from first marriage) took thalidomide in her of with him, but was still so sick she didn't absorb enough to have an impact on my half brother. He is very tall and very long limbed. When I was pg myself, I suffered from Hyperemisis both times. The older locum doc at my GP practice was happy to sign me off work for as long as I wanted, but he would not prescribe any anti sickness drugs. At the time I was annoyed, but in retrospect I can see his point. He'd had patients earlier in his career whose babies had been affected by Thalidomide.

I can't imagine women not knowing the word vagina in the 1960s

I can well imagine working class, minimally educated* women in the East End not knowing the word "vagina", especially older women like the one in the episode.

*They left school young to go out to work and support the family. I have Cockney ancestors who all worked at the Bryant & May match factory in Bow (which gets mentioned in CTW) and my nan had to leave school at 14 to work in a parachute factory when WWII broke out

I can imagine people not knowing the word as well. My grandmother might have known the right word but equally might not have done.

My auntie who married was horrified when in labour to discover how her baby was going to be born. She told me "I thought they would cut my tummy". That was a bit earlier than 1961 though, more like 1957 or so but fact is she didn't know very much having been to a convent school where sex was something that nice girls didn't do.

I was watching Countdown with my godmother's mother, born around 1920, and the word "orgasm" came up. She said "orgasm? Never heard of that word, only organism". I was about twenty? Young enough to still be embarrassed even though it was also funny

Me too Alfie we all had very rudimentary (if any) sex education, we were shown a bad blackboard drawing of a rabbit's insides and no words for human, or any bits, were ever mentioned esp. at Catholic schools.

No wonder there were so many unmarried mothers at catholic school, they wouldn't have know what was going on !!!

Most parents were too embarrassed to say anything too. Which is funny considering how bohemian and modern my parents thought they were.

lauren it was heartbreaking and I couldn't believe it tbh. all the more as a school friends brother had downs and I knew what he was capable of!

anybody watching

So, it's Breast vs bottle.

Just caught up & trying to watch tonight's but streaming playing up

Can't believe formula companies actually used to do that

I still can't believe even to this day, we are still having this awful conversation.

We shouldn't be bullying women into breast feeding, making them selves feel worthless.

uh oh

The husband is going to be Burse Crane's Spanish lothario isn't he

*Nurse

Husband?

Of the old lady with dementia, I was right

I wish they were doing it a different way, rather than showing the breastfeeding mother dehydrating her baby, and manic with blood pouring from her nipples.

Ooh I'm ten minutes behind!

Sorry I've just tuned in but why is the husband dying?

Leukaemia.

Why do I watch this? Why? It's torture.

Leukaemia Norfolk

Thank you!

Gosh, its a sad one tonight. I didn't think he'd make it for a while.

Oh it's so shamelessly contrived and manipulative, but it gets me every time