Call the Midwife.

[Toddlerteaplease]

Anyone watching? Dr smug unfortunately appears fully recovered from the train crash.

Yes that's possibly the case regarding menopause, but Dr Turner is a doctor and Sheila is a trained midwife. I doubt people in those professions would have been embarrassed talking about such matters.

She's a nurse/midwife and her husband is a doctor. They're not the typical couple, I think it'd be fair to assume they aren't coy about that kind of thing. My mum was a nurse and my dad a paramedic- some of our dinner table conversations were quite something!! (I was born mid 80s though so not CTM times)

The play finished in April around the time the Christmas special was filmed and she was in that.

I think she will be back, but maybe not until next series.

Anyone else think Trixie's accent went into overdrive when she was talking to St Matthew's dad (just before he died). It peaked when she said the word nurse with vowels so clipped there were none.

Did love Trixie’s line
“I’m not playing at being a nurse. I am a nurse”

This, this, this, this, this!!! I've been saying it to myself for weeks, but everyone seems to love him. He smiles at the most inopportune times. But he was better this week.

Lucille has always come across as a cold fish and a bit of a stuck up cow (sorry, I know she's now depressed and having fertility issues, which would make anyone cold.). Sorry, but I do think this. She also scolds Cyril like a child.

There's been a lot of dialogue in recent episodes that makes me feel like the writers don't trust us to understand things unless they're explicitly stated. The irony of the woman who was 'too young' to be sterilised was far too subtle to be intentional! And they need to find a better way to keep the viewers up-to-date with the medical stuff without Dr Turner pointlessly explaining it to colleagues that would already know.

My favourite part of this week's episode was when Reggie - with the smug expression of a man who thinks he discovered the best way to a woman's heart - presented the dry cleaner with a picture of Jesus. 😆

Yes, even DH, who wasn't really watching, looked up and commented on that "nurse" !

Maybe they’re going through the alphabet and they’re doing ‘V’ at the moment!

What is after V 🤔

If they are cracking through the alphabet, I’ll have to shield my eyes from little TimmyTurner when Shelagh catches him in the act of onanism.

And Dr T explains why it is all perfectly natural and he certainly won’t go blind…

And that Elizabeth Arden eight hour cream will magic away any sore bits….

works for frostbite 🤷🏻‍♀️

I do feel like it demonises c sections? Is that just me being sensitive?

“Every woman meets her child in battle, in pain” well no, I ‘met’ my baby in a calm surgical environment and that doesn’t make it any less of a birth.

Haha yes you’re spot on about Reggie there!

C sections were not really in the midwives' remit, any planned sections would be St Cuthberts and emergencies would be by ambulance.
I don't think they were very common in the 60s, certainly much fewer than these days.

My section was definitely a battle. Not all sections are calm and planned! For me it was the final action in a long and bloody war.

I don't think so.

One of the very first episodes at all was about an older mum who had carried 6 or 7 babies to full term, but they had all died in childbirth due to deformities in her pelvis from Polio. She had a c section - at no cost to her - on the "new" NHS and finally had a live baby. The Vanessa Redgrave voice over was very philosophical about both the CS and NHS. I remember it so well, because I watched it whilst feeding my baby DD - born by crash section on the NHS a few weeks earlier.

Ok - I can accept when I’m being oversensitive! Thank you.

In what way?

I don’t recall anything negative being said in the series (although there are a lot of them!) - including indirectly.

In the South Africa Xmas special, Trixie even performs one, so that seems far from demonising!

CS were 3% of births in the 1950s, and only hit 10% in the early 80s, so I’d guess about 5% in the 60s. In the context of community midwifery, it just wouldn’t have been that many.

I was born by CS in 1955 as my mum was tiny. I was born in a military hospital abroad but my younger sister was born in the UK in a hospital over 30 miles away from the remote place where we lived. It wasn't undertaken lightly because, among other reasons, the recovery time was much longer than now.

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂Brilliant.

My mum
Was also born by C section in 1953 I believe it was an elective one for the same reason. My mum was predicted to be quite large and her mum was tiny. We found her wedding dress after she died and we couldn't even get it over my much slimmer sisters head.

I used to dress up in my Mums wedding dress but couldn't get it on after I was about 12 - and I'm not particularly big but was an 8lb baby. My mum was 5ft tall and, back then, post war skinny.

Agree re the schizophrenia- I diagnosed that straight away, DR Smug was far too slow! It seemed a bit of a quick decline but maybe he was showing signs beforehand they didn’t show - I have known people whose MH seemed fine one day & next they’re not!
Also called the heart attack - ‘indigestion’ is never that on TV - she could’ve taken his pulse/listened to his chest before he collapsed!!
Poor Cyril - harsh that she’s buggered off for 6 months but agree she could come ack & be preggers!!

But if Lucille does come back pregnant, will the timelines make it that it's actually Cyril's baby? Or will there be doubt?

She seemed to be drifting from her faith because she felt God had abandoned her in her desire for a child. Her faith was central to her life before, but now I wonder...

Or will she come back with a child that she had adopted or been given the care of?

Maybe she can't come back for 6 months as she is worried about flying pregnant?