Call the midwife- brand new series starts tonight!!

[Soubriquet]

At 8pm

Who's ready for it?!

A good episode, my 11 yo watched it and was really shocked as was the first she had ever heard of fgm. It still beggers belief that it happens and that women do it to each other.

Poor Cynthia, such a good actress you can really feel her inner struggle.

Next week's looks traumatic as well!

Another episode that had me sobbing. It is remarkable though how good a MW the former army nurse is? And when was she meant to have left the army? She still seems very young.

Hope no one minds me joining in, I have been on the CTM threads but didn't join this one until now because I've been binge watching the new series, very impressed so far, lots of issues covered, I'll read the thread now.

Cynthia is breaking my heart, she looked so lost and lonely, I'm glad she is going back to her beginnings, sometimes we all need a reboot.

Was the new MW an MW before she went in the Army perhaps? Can't se there was much call for midwives in field hospitals, unless she worked at a home for fallen WReNS? ,

Good god the way that new nurse purses her lips and nods her head after every sentence is really really annoying.

I thought they did it really well tonight. Also I was screaming at the TV that someone needs to explain to her what is going on when they were taking her to see the consultant and discuss episiotomy etc.

Sadly have come across FGM and it's horrific but her speech at the end really showed how it's perceived by these women and shows why it's such a hard issue to tackle.

The "happy ending" where she decided not to have her daughter cut was a little twee and predictable when sadly that's not the reality for many women.

Better than I expected though. Looking forward to next week.

I need to know why Nurse Crane is crying next week.

I love Nurse Crane. I want to be her when I grow up. I don't want her to cry.

That was a good episode, the fgm woman was a brilliant actress; she went into that 'I'm not listening' mode when the doctor was talking about the problems with blood \urine etc. which is how it would be (and still is I suppose), how could anyone keep mentally 'whole' knowing that your female relations did it to you? ?

Poor Cynthia, she seemed better straight after the ECT but was soon back to 'normal' . I hope the new home helps with more humane psychotherapy.

I lIke the new midwife a lot. Good actress.

It bugged me that vanessa Redgrave said "generations before her" had been cut but didn't say "and so would some after". Like it was a problem firmly solved in the past, iyswim?

The clip of nurse crane crying made me :(

The new midwife's permanent smile is rather unnerving.

I'm wondering if something happens to one of the cubs that Nurse Crane is looking after? Hope she is alright, she is one of my favourite characters and the sort of nurse I want to be one day!!

I think Nurse Crane has hit someone in her car (the boy in hospital with his father sitting beside him)

Didn't Nurse Crane say that fgm used to be done 'here' too? Meaning done to Brits?

Yeah I reckon it will be a car accident - there's been lots of car related foreshadowing...

ppeatfruit I think that Nurse Crane was referring to hysterectomies to stop women's hysteria. I might be wrong though. I can't think of anything else that would fit in that context.

I spotted that ppeatfruit and did wonder what she meant when she referred to it happening here. I thought it was a fantastic episode. Although i did find it difficult to believe that she would decide not to have her daughter cut given her strength of feeling on the subject. I cried for her sister waving on the boat

I quite like the new nurse, but i was also a bit at her midwifery knowledge. But am prepared for a bit of artistic license for this

Ooh car accident is a good guess. I love this thread almost as much as I love nurse Crane.

I started reading this on history of women's mental health, it's really interesting

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3480686/#!po=30.0000

Unless nurse went did midwife then war happened and she joined up to army core. But surely in 10-15y she would need a refresher course or something!

I found the description of the FGM very harrowing. The way they described her as having the same visible genitalia as the doll. To be completely honest, I've never been sure what exactly the result would be. I've read a fair bit but of course never seen the result.

I thought it was well handled. It's still the reality for a lot of young girls and it's a horrifying thought.

Clitoridectomy was performed in Victorian times for various female disorders. From Wikipedia:
In the 19th century, a clitoridectomy was thought to curb female masturbation.[7] Isaac Baker Brown (1812–1873), an English gynaecologist who was president of the Medical Society of London believed that the "unnatural irritation" of the clitoris caused epilepsy, hysteria, and mania, and he worked "to remove [it] whenever he had the opportunity of doing so", according to his obituary in the Medical Times and Gazette. Peter Lewis Allen writes that Brown's views caused outrage, and he died penniless after being expelled from the Obstetrical Society.[8]

For a time female circumcision was done as a cure for insanity. Some practitioners of medicine in the Victorian era believed that mental and emotional disorders were related to female reproductive organs. Some thought that removing the clitoris would cure the neurosis. This treatment was discontinued in 1867.[9]

I remember when I was nurse training seeing in an old medical textbbook (probably from 1950's / 1960's) a picture of an enlarged clitoris "due to excessive masturbation".

Cliteredectomy, removal of the labia etc were all done here usually for hysteria aka not knowing your place as a woman. All sorts of bizarre, unscientific, barbaric stuff was done. The history of mental asylums is similarly misogynistic. This is an interesting article: www.feministcurrent.com/2016/10/04/this-is-how-they-broke-our-grandmothers/
FGM is harrowing. There's a documentary which is good but shows it done which is really really horrible. I have lots of Somali patients and it is still very prevalent there (99% of women) so I was annoyed too when they didn't mention it still happening in the Vanessa Redgrave voice over.
Not having your daughters undergo FGM can be part of an asylum claim here/a condition of being given asylum. Sometimes I have to check girls' genitals to make sure they haven't been cut and sign the paperwork for that.

The description of being like a doll is quite apt, but that's the most extreme type (and most dangerous), infibulation. Outer and inner labia are removed, as is the clitoris and clitoral hood and then everything is sewn together (imagine the seam running along the doll's bottom) leaving a small hole through which to menstruate and urinate. Generally sex is very painful and the scar has to be cut open to deliver after which the wound is sewn back closed. Though here they leave a larger opening now. Of course they can't restore the clitoris and labia.

Yes all sorts was done to women here for daring to have emotions or sexual desire.

Fgm is still done in some areas to white women though it is rare but I think some areas of rural Russia with very orthodox views will do it to girls.

All the women I have come into contact with fgm say that they do not want it for their own children. However, the safeguarding risk to girls comes from the community too and the extended family. Mothers and mothers in law come to visit to help care for the mother and baby after birth. Families go to their home country in the long summer holidays. It is not uncommon at all for girls to be cut by aunts or grandmothers against the wishes of their mother. But slowly slowly things are changing.

I saw a presentation by a group who travel around educating communities about fgm and trying to change attitudes here in the uk. The founder was a man. He had no clue about fgm when he married, his wife was the first and only vulva he had seen so he didn't know it wasn't supposed to look like that and of course it isn't something spoken about to men. It wasn't until she was in labour and of course the dr had to be involved that he realised. The way he spoke was so moving, he was aghast because right at that moment his wife and his baby were at risk so the knowledge of fgm came to him along with very real awareness of long term risks. It was strange because they do a play/dance thing about fgm which is supposed to be their presentation but tbh I didn't really get that but the q&a after where he spoke about how he began his journey to speaking out against fgm was very hard hitting.

I'm not normally a fan of men taking action against things that are predominantly women's health issues but I think in the case of fgm there needs to be partnership so that men make it known that they want their wives and daughters to be uncut and deconstruct the myth that only cut women will find husbands.

What I don't understand about this episode, and maybe i missed something, or don't understand FGM properly, is that didn't the lady have an older daughter already? So the woman must have been in labour before and had to have help to get her out the first time round? The way it was portrayed it looked like it was the first time she'd given birth?

The older girl was her sister it was her first child.