Call the Midwife

[Toddlerteaplease]

Well this is boring.

Some time between 1960 and 1965 my schoolfriends and I (teenagers) started using tampons. It was like joining a club when you went to school and announced that you'd managed to get one in.

Im hoping Timothy's girlfriend gets herself pregnant, and he has to marry her. My boss told me that this happened to a friend of his, the nuns would love an immaculate conception, and Patrick could explain it.

I’m hoping that Timothy brings home a boyfriend. It would really shake that episode up but would give Dr and Mrs a few well chosen script lines about tolerance and acceptance and the times they are a’ changing whilst smiling beatifically at their offspring to the strains of Jailhouse Rock.

Does anyone remember an episode a while back where someone (a young girl's?) uterus sort of prolapsed or was delivered inside out or something? I think the baby was delivered by her mum who was going to pretend to be the baby's mum maybe.
I remember feeling a bit ill about it. A bit like when the gangrenous leg came off in a midwife's hand recently

Yes. A doddery visiting doc answered the phone when the mum called the midwives as the placenta hadn't cone and told her to give the cord a pull. 🤢

@eggandonion

Im hoping Timothy's girlfriend gets herself pregnant, and he has to marry her. My boss told me that this happened to a friend of his, the nuns would love an immaculate conception, and Patrick could explain it.

Gets herself pregnant? How?

@JakeyRolling

Yes. A doddery visiting doc answered the phone when the mum called the midwives as the placenta hadn't cone and told her to give the cord a pull. 🤢

Eek 🤢

Young women always seemed to get themselves pregnant in Ireland when I was young. Often to trap husbands.

There was a thing about not wearing tampons until you were married. I think this was because you were told not to touch yourself 'down there' so you didn't really know your way around. I wasn't successful in inserting a tampon until a boy had found the way first. (I don't mean the tampon)

It was because of the ridiculous emphasis placed on women being virgins on their wedding night Tampons were believed to 'break the hymen' and so some husband might have been horrified when his new bride didn't bleed and assume she'd been sexually active before their marriage. (Double )

Young women always seemed to get themselves pregnant in Ireland when I was young. Often to trap husbands.

I think you'll find there would have been a man involved in each case of pregnancy. If you're not familiar with the facts of the birds and the bees, I'm sure Sr Hilda could give you a quick overview.

I know this happened a couple of episodes ago now, but I found the storyline regarding the discovery of the two babies massively infuriating. Especially how everyone just willing accepted that woman's account about how the two babies ended up hidden under the floor and up the chimney. Especially as she tried to pin it on her elderly mother with dementia to start with. And the logic that because she wrapped them up in her blouse she must have cared about them was astoundingly bizarre.

It was barking, wasn't it? I mean, I know it was back in the distant, cloudy mists of time if you're fresh out of script-writing school or whereever people go to qualify to write for CTM, but I'm pretty sure even in the 1970s they did actually have police procedure and not yet 'ooh shall we let the local doc interview them as he's such a saint?'

@eggandonion

Young women always seemed to get themselves pregnant in Ireland when I was young. Often to trap husbands.

Did those husbands to be not consider keeping their penises in their pants? Or taking responsibility for their own fertility and using contraception?

Young women always seemed to get themselves pregnant in Ireland when I was young. Often to trap husbands.

What did they do? Lie on their backs with their legs in the air trying to attract stray sperm?

I assumed eggandonion was being sardonic

@upinaballoon

Some time between 1960 and 1965 my schoolfriends and I (teenagers) started using tampons. It was like joining a club when you went to school and announced that you'd managed to get one in.

Lilets did a teeny tiny tampon ( they probably still do) that was I suppose a gateway tampon for many. I couldn’t cope with applicator tampons to save my life!

@eggandonion

Im hoping Timothy's girlfriend gets herself pregnant, and he has to marry her. My boss told me that this happened to a friend of his, the nuns would love an immaculate conception, and Patrick could explain it.

Fabulous! Parthenogenesis I think it’s called. Imagine St Pat expounding on that.

@VeryLongBeeeeep

There was a thing about not wearing tampons until you were married. I think this was because you were told not to touch yourself 'down there' so you didn't really know your way around. I wasn't successful in inserting a tampon until a boy had found the way first. (I don't mean the tampon)

It was because of the ridiculous emphasis placed on women being virgins on their wedding night Tampons were believed to 'break the hymen' and so some husband might have been horrified when his new bride didn't bleed and assume she'd been sexually active before their marriage. (Double )

Young women always seemed to get themselves pregnant in Ireland when I was young. Often to trap husbands.

I think you'll find there would have been a man involved in each case of pregnancy. If you're not familiar with the facts of the birds and the bees, I'm sure Sr Hilda could give you a quick overview.

I was allowed to use tampons I just found it difficult until I explored the area properly. This would have been 1971.

I think the poster talking about girls 'getting themselves pregnant' knew exactly what had happened.

There was definitely a view of girls getting themselves "into trouble", as if a man was not involved. And also the view that a young woman would get upduffed in ordrer to trap a man into marrying her, as if he had no choice in whether to have sex or not. All buys into the "woman as seducer, man as hapless victim" bullshit that was started by the church and is still with us to this day.

Did anyone else remember Nurse Crane meeting a chap at Spanish lessons? Perhaps she will bump into him in the Spanish part of her coach trip!
www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/call-the-midwife-tugs-at-the-heartstrings-in-new-ways/

[quote Wilma55]Did anyone else remember Nurse Crane meeting a chap at Spanish lessons? Perhaps she will bump into him in the Spanish part of her coach trip!
www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/call-the-midwife-tugs-at-the-heartstrings-in-new-ways/[/quote]
Didn't he have a wife with dementia? Perhaps she has died and he's gone on holiday to the same place as Phyllis.

[quote Wilma55]Did anyone else remember Nurse Crane meeting a chap at Spanish lessons? Perhaps she will bump into him in the Spanish part of her coach trip!
www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/call-the-midwife-tugs-at-the-heartstrings-in-new-ways/[/quote]
Good point

@PyongyangKipperbang

There was definitely a view of girls getting themselves "into trouble", as if a man was not involved. And also the view that a young woman would get upduffed in ordrer to trap a man into marrying her, as if he had no choice in whether to have sex or not. All buys into the "woman as seducer, man as hapless victim" bullshit that was started by the church and is still with us to this day.

Someone pointed out on mumsnet that people talk about a man "having his head turned" as if the poor dear is completely passive in it. Ditto women being called marriage wreckers

@GruffaloSolja

I know this happened a couple of episodes ago now, but I found the storyline regarding the discovery of the two babies massively infuriating. Especially how everyone just willing accepted that woman's account about how the two babies ended up hidden under the floor and up the chimney. Especially as she tried to pin it on her elderly mother with dementia to start with. And the logic that because she wrapped them up in her blouse she must have cared about them was astoundingly bizarre.

I think they can tell the difference between the remains of a newborn that was born alive then died/was killed and a stillborn baby. I assumed that this made the difference, they knew both babies were stillborn so accepted the story?

I think they can tell the difference between the remains of a newborn that was born alive then died/was killed and a stillborn baby. I assumed that this made the difference, they knew both babies were stillborn so accepted the story?

I don't think this makes sense, and not least because they showed skeletal remains of a much older baby, so they weren't being even vaguely realistic about it.

I am not a medic but I deal a bit with reports from the archaeology of neonates versus stillborn babies and AFAIK it's still virtually impossible to tell. If a baby has gone through the birth canal you might see the bones in the skull have been moved, but that wouldn't prove the baby was stillborn. If you had more than skeletal remains, you'd be able to see if the lung tissue had ever inflated (ie., the baby had breathed). But they didn't have that so wouldn't have known.

I know there's actually still sometimes controversy over where exactly the line is between stillbirth and neonatal death. There have been cases where parents argued that a baby was born trying to breathe and might have survived had medics not assumed they were dealing with a stillbirth.

Sorry, off on a tangent, but I thought they dealt with this fairly complex issue in a really clumsy way!

Sorry, that wasn't super clear - I mean, I believe you can sometimes distinguish between a foetus that shows no signs of having passed through the birth canal, and one that has. But that doesn't help us distinguish a stillbirth from a living neonate.