Call the midwife- brand new series starts tonight!!

[Soubriquet]

At 8pm

Who's ready for it?!

He actually seems to be a bit stilted in real life. Maybe he just has strange speech patterns?

I really enjoyed the documentary and Stephen McGann came across really well. They talked about midwifery as a developing profession and about the start of the NHS.

They talked about Thalidomide and McGann interviewed Thalidomide survivor and disability rights campaigner Rosaleen Moriarty-Simmonds. All in all it was really interesting and McGann was very good as the presenter.

Hmm, maybe Notjust.

I think it's strange if they felt it didn't have enough 'man' in it. I guess I am biased there, because one of the things I enjoy is a good female-centric drama, but in the early series, there were several male characters - Jimmy, Noakes, and Fred as well - who all played different small roles which I think worked well. Now there's just the doctor and the wet-as-fuck chaplain bloke.

I would very happily see more interesting male characters in there, but I think those two are quite one-note.

The documentary does sound really good, though.

The documentary was great. I quoted something from in it a job interview the other day too.

I personally agree with you, LRD. I was perfectly happy with the early level of male. I'm not sure though how brave it may be considered to have a major drama series without a 'lead' male character. Depressingly brave, I think, and maybe as it got bigger pressure was applied?

Or it could just be the writer.

You see, that description of the documentary just makes me more cross. It should have been presented by one of the "midwives", not the mansplaining "doctor".

Men did exist back then, just as they do now. I had no thought when I watched the documentary that it should have been presented by a female. As far as I'm concerned it was presented by a person.

The programme is about midwives. Not the token doctor.

CTMW is about so much more than midwives and a doctor. It's also about the families and their stories and the nuns at NH. Although it's mainly fiction these days, it's based on fact and it's the historical aspect that I find so fascinating. Back then "The Doctor" was seen as more important. It's only recently that midwives and nurses have been seen as professionals in their own right rather than handmaidens to doctors.

That's absolutely not true, stuffed. Jennifer Worth makes this point in her books.

Back then, the norm was a midwife delivery. Not doctors. And indeed, midwives did (and do) train doctors.

She partly wrote the books because she wanted to tell people about the roles midwives used to play, before childbirth in a hospital, with doctors on hand if need be, became the norm.

And she makes the point in several places that the doctors deferred to the midwives, as they recognised the midwives had extensive experience they simply didn't share. For example, she mentions Sister Evangelina being treated as a complete professional authority by the doctor during a difficult delivery.

We shall have to agree to differ on the hierarchy of doctors and nurses.

and midwives.

Um ... ok, but it's not me you're 'differing' with - it's the writer of the books the series is based on.

Jennifer Worth was just giving her memories of her days as a midwife. In the documentary mention was made that some of her recollections were not based in fact.

For most of the nineteenth century, women could not be ‘professionals’ like doctors. At the same time, UK midwives were subjected to a deskilling strategy by the medical profession (Witz, 1992). Midwives could only attend women in ‘normal’ labour, ‘abnormal’ labour being claimed as a medical domain (Donnison, 1988). Women in ‘normal’ labour needed only care and support from their attendants, while ‘abnormal’ labour involved interventions requiring technical or surgical skills. This medical division of practice, although reformalised, still persists (NMC, 2004).

Yes, sure, it is her memories, and I recognise that.

But ... you know, what you say in your second paragraph is the same thing I said, right? The norm was midwife delivery. Doctors did the complications, but midwives were respected for their knowledge of normal deliveries, including those with some complications.

If you read her books (and, in fact, watch the early series), you see how clear it is that these were women with a lot of training and skill. It's ridiculous to pretend midwives were seen as 'handmaidens to doctors' when, clearly, the majority of births happened with no doctor anywhere near.

I am not denigrating doctors' skills. But one reason I enjoyed both the books and the TV series was that it reflected the experiences of women doing a professional, skilled job at a time when that was new and exciting. I do think it's a pity that's been turned into a show with a doctor mansplaining!

The National Health Service (NHS) Act in 1946 provided free access for all women to doctors as well as midwives; it was at this point that general practitioners began to regularly see women through pregnancy in order to get the fee available to them from the NHS. As they were not required to attend the birth in order to be paid, this role was frequently left to the midwife who may not have had the opportunity to meet the woman through the pregnancy. Continuity of support suffered as a result of these changes (Towler & Bramall 1986); total responsibility by the midwife for the pregnancy, birth and postnatal period was also affected.

You do know this isn't set in the 19th Century, don't you? It is the 20th Century.

In the mid 20th Century midwives were not doctor-led.

It's also about the prism the show uses. For community midwives even today doctors are a very small part of their work. I had all my children at home with a practice of NHS community midwives and only saw a doctor once, for a painkiller prescription. The majority of the women the midwives in Call the Midwife looked after would have had the same experience.

The fact is that the show has shifted focus. Lots of superfluous doctor, shoehorned into plots that he doesn't naturally belong in.

Actually I saw no doctors during either of my pregnancies. Had one prescription over the phone from a dr. Both births midwife only in hospital ( consultant was sent away by head midwife as in needed)

I thought Dr Turner was going to get lung cancer and die anyway.....

I don't mind him too much, his wife is more annoying.

Glad to see CtM back, and I enjoyed the first episode. I'm amusing myself thinking I might be born during this series - I was a spring 1962 east end baby, born about a mile and a half by my reckoning from where Nonatus House is supposed to be. We were rehoused when I was six (our street was knocked down to make way for a new road), so I don't remember much about the area or what life was like, but it's interesting to see how it might have been!

I'm not liking the new nun very much, but my guess is that Nonatus House will work its magic and she'll be transformed. Maybe the mother ship house thought Sr Julienne was getting a bit older and being in charge was too much for her?

It must be fascinating Mornington, knowing that your mother was not unlike one of these women.

Shelagh Turner and the Dr were talking on Graham Norton Radio 2 breakfast show yesterday,

Notjustuser Well someone has to take responsibility for the subscribing of thalidomide don't they? The doctor of course

Ha! He's allowed that story. Although that could easily just have been a story about the effects of thalidomide without any of the doctorly sleuthing.