Call the Midwife.

[Toddlerteaplease]

What is going on with Mother Mildreds make up?

I thought Trixie also had a private income?

She does she flaunts her fancy cold creams and cocktail dresses no 1960s nurse would be able to afford all that.

Totally ridiculous. A place that is sparsely populated miraculously has several labours, an appendicitis case and burns to be treated in the 5 days the miracle nuns happen to be dicking around there.

Yes Mrs lighthouse would have gone to the mainland to have her baby and the safely get her appendix out !

Hope nobody fell ill or gave birth in Poplar while they were away!

The Pill was only available to married women until 1961 and the majority of births were at home until the mid sixties. So if it’s 1964 the midwives would still have been needed. We’ll probably see the move to hospital births soon. By 1975 fewer than 5% of births were at home. Perhaps they will cover the nuns’ work with drug addicts etc in later series.

Not the majority of births at home but around a third until the mid sixties.

I do think in reality Mrs Lighthouse wouldhave come off the lighthouse island to have her baby though I know it was all for drama and plot but it wasreally far fetched !

My brother and I were both born in hospital and that was the early 60s. Not sure why, I've never thought to ask my mum.

They did throw in a few lines to suggest they'd arranged cover back at Poplar. There was a locum GP and reinforcements from the Mother House had come to cover the midwifery practice. What was happening at the Mother House was not mentioned.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-50829943 This is a BBC feature on the background to nursing/midwifery in the Outer Hebrides.

That article is fascinating a baby was treated for falling into a pot of soup

The Hebrides books by Lilian Beckwith starting with The Hills Are Lonely, feature the district nurse, who could do everything. I know her books were set earlier though but people up there are , and were self sufficient. I agree it’s lost the warmth and grit from earlier series which are being repeated on drama channel at the moment. I think they need to call it a day soon.

Cool Carrie I think you are right they are over milking it now I will watch the new series though so Im not hating it that much

Our next door neighbour had a baby at home in 1962 and I can remember my mum thinking it was unusual. She had been a nurse before she married, though, and had 2 C sections so maybe it just seemed more normal to her

From Farewell to the East End by Jennifer Worth:
[following the advent of the pill in 1963... The birth rate plummeted].... 'Throughout the 1950s the Sisters had delivered around 109 babies per month. In the year 1964 that number dropped to four or five.'
The nuns started to do other work - drug abuse, shelter for the homeless, working with the dead, helping a Asian women to integrate into British life and, in the 1980s working with Aids patients. Nonnatus house closed in 1978.

Another plot hole for me was the fact that surely it would take 2 days or so to get there and same to return so by the time they arrived and set up the clinic it would be time to start the homeward journey again .
Oh and could you get more Scottish than characters called Effie ( which always sounds to me like the full name should be Effluence but that is just me ) and Angus Mac something or other! Mad !
Oh and I do wish that new nurse would stop calling everyone precious ! It really grates!
So apart from the annoying Turners , the ridiculous storylines the stereotypical dour Scots and the sickly sweet nonsense from all concerned it was great

That should say working with the deaf not dead (which would have been pointless).

EFFLUANCE

I think Effluance got her HD brows done for the nurses coming they were so big !

Mrsjayy I said the same thin g to dh, with beautiful hair that colour her eyebrows would have been much lighter, it looking odd and distracting. The writer should have watched Whisky Galore before writing this

A Highland district midwife would make a good spin off - which of the team, or pair from the team, would you like to see in a 10 part series based up there? It could look in much more depth at the fishing, kelp gathering, knitting and tweed communities.

It was a bit like Katie Morag for grown-ups!

At least there was less teal

Does anyone else remember The District Nurse with Nerys Hughes ?

Yes, I do @CoolCarrie. Wasn't there also something similar with Wendy Craig.

@NewModelArmyMayhem18 Katie Morag getting knocked up at 16 because there's sod all else to do on the island...

I'd watch that spin off!

At least there was less teal
Silver lining s 😁

Yes I. Remember the. District nurse I used to watch it with my mum

Yes, I do @CoolCarrie. Wasn't there also something similar with Wendy Craig.

I think Wendy Craig was a Nanny I have a. Memory of big prams and capes

I was disappointed they made the locals look like idiots. As though they didn’t know how to deal with a woman having a baby. These people were supposedly from a crofting background. Fathers would have calved and lambed since they were children themselves with their own dad. A woman having a baby wound have been dealt with as routine. I don’t think there would have been any panic or shouting for help. Just another female of God’s creatures having a baby. The women of the village would have helped. I’d have suspected more distrust of the strangers from the big city and their city ways possibly from the devil..