Call the Midwife.

[Toddlerteaplease]

What is going on with Mother Mildreds make up?

George wouldn't have given his entire reason for living just like that.

Anyone else think they used the same baby for the lady who gave birth in the flat & then the baby whose heart was being checked in hospital?

Yes! I thought they were the same!

Was everyone else adding ‘Parklife’ every so often?

The pigeons were all he seemed to have. No family etc. If it was me then to be very blunt I’d sooner live a shorter life than give up much loved pets.

I was shocked that they let the male doctors stay there. Not suitable for the nuns at all.

Same baby?!

Yes Suninthesky I thought the same too.

Didn't the nuns make a fuss when PC Noakes had to come and stay for a while, that there would be a man under their roof? Seems odd they are now fine with four men who they've never met before!

That's not the same baby, different mouth

It's on the baby's face?

FlamingoAndJohn I knew I wasn't alone with the Parklife thing!!

I came to comment on that, but I got lost in the thread and have been weeping for five solid minutes at The Turners' Teal Room.

And PC Noakes was married, which made it only just acceptable.

Did anybody notice the turner stairs desth trap !

The terrified face of Val's doctor post delivery was great.

And loved their teal car!

“ John's got brewer's droop he gets intimidated by the dirty pigeons, they love a bit of him”

So it seemed everyone just assumed from the start that the doctors would all be male - and they were. But there were female doctors back then - in fact women have been very well established in medicine for a long time. And have we ever seen a woman doctor on Call the Midwife or a male midwife?

We have seen a female doctor - she ran the clinic in Africa.

We will see more female doctors in due course, in the sixties there were still more male than female but it was improving (now more women than men apply for medicine - yay). On this occasion there were four men who wanted to do the particular course, next time we'll have at least one woman I'm sure.

Dr Turner is thinking of having anther doc in the practice, I hope that's a woman.

I thought there might have been a whirlwind romance between Val and the less confident doctor she was paired with for rounds.

i don't think there were any male midwives at this time.
I seem to remember the furore of the first ones starting, ?in the 80s?

everyone just assumed from the start that the doctors would all be male

I thought Dr Turner knew who the doctors were and therefore knew they were male. He would have had to tell Sister Julienne in advance.

I seem to remember the furore of the first ones starting, ?in the 80s?
I had a baby in 1980 when you stayed in hospital for ages. There was a young male nurse on the ward but I'm not sure if he was training to be a Midwife. It felt a bit awkward showing him my STs to check the colour of the discharge but I got over it. I remember him giving a suppository to a woman who shouted out 'you've got it in the wrong hole!' in a very loud Cockney accent.

I shared a house (at university) with a female medic in the mid 80’s - there were a few but I can’t remember when male midwives first appeared.

The number of women going into medicine has grown steadily in the last 100 years to the point where as someone has already said there are now more women qualifying than men. In the 50s/60s female medical students would have been very much in the minority. By the end of the 70s when I left school, it was probably a bit better. Several girls in my year group went on to medical school (I think it may have been as high as 10 out of about 85 - but it was a very academic school with a strong science department).

Sadly, the change to being a female-dominated profession has brought with it some familiar problems.

1. Lots of women qualify, but not many progress to the very top, for all the usual reasons.
2. Lots of women move to working part-time after having children, for obvious reasons, and this is one reason the NHS has shortages of GPs.
3. Any female-dominated profession loses status, even one with such a long and demanding training as medicine.

I enjoyed last night's episode. The arrogant doctor was quite realistic, I thought. It was good to see an explicit statement that these highly trained and experienced women knew far more than the young men. I liked Val intervening to spare that woman an unnecessary episiotomy.

And yes, I strongly suspect we'll see the humble doctor back as Dr Turner's new partner.

I do hope that at some point this series the focus will be on Fenella Woolgar and the very young nun. We've seen very little of them this series.