Call the midwife part 2

[TwinklyFawn]

I know that my first thread isn't full yet. I just wanted to create the second thread before i forgot.

I just thought it looked like a community centre. However having Googled pictures of the current Tower Hamlets Registrar Office the room looked quite accurate (if it hasn't changed much in 55 years).

Obviously Nancy needed to have her baby prematurely as part of the crescendo towards the series finale.

But typically people spent weeks, not years planning weddings in the 1970s, especially if they were pregnant and having a registry office wedding. I remember my cousin marrying within a month of finding out she was pregnant in 1980, so I'm not completely buying that Nancy would have waited until seven months. Denial or no denial, her determination to do it differently the second time around would have more likely led to a spring wedding. And yes, I am overthinking this.

Sister Catherine's lovely.
When they briefly mentioned the dad of Paula's baby I thought she might end up living with the boyfriend's parents with the baby or the baby might and she could visit.
I liked the other mum saying "He can come with us, he's got our hooter" etc.

I think that it has gone down hill gradually. I did enjoy series 5, 6 and 7. I thought that this series was an improvement on series 13.

I am sure that doctor turner said that she had dementia in series 1 episode 6. She went wondering in her nightie. Doctor turner said that she had dementia as she was brought back by a police nan in her nightie. Now she just gets confused when she has an infection. Yes this is common. It just annoys me that dementia was mentioned.

Just jumping in (I've been watching them while sewing this weekend) to comment that the battles that they're showing with social services and conversations/arguments with social workers have been the same bloody ones we still have at work in the community in 2025! (Thinking of the little lad with school transport in particular)

(They have more success resolving these issues in CTM land)

Agree entirely - the trend for bridesmaids preceding the bride seems to have caught on relatively recently and I suspect comes from "across the pond". Traditionally, the bridesmaids went behind the bride to carry her train or stop it catching on anything as she walked down the aisle. Even at a less formal registry office ceremony in the 70s, there's no way the bridesmaids would have gone in first. It looks as though the CTM researchers really didn't do their homework on this one!

i was a bridesmaid in 1987, we followed the bride, she passed me her flowery umbrella

Yes surely bridesmaids are meant to walk behind because they carry the wedding dress train.
Obviously Nancy didn't have one of those.
I realised that little baby of hers is now a 55 year old woman (if she was real).
I can imagine her finding the wedding photos and saying "Good grief mum.....what on earth were you wearing?"

Yes.

Yes. Clearly signalled by the tweed suit and tie 😂

Ooo - I've found this thread far too late. I was on an old one ("Call Saint Turner") but didn't find this when I searched for a new CTM thread.

I still can't believe that they killed off Nigel. Gutted. I'm more of a dog person, but I did love Nigel and his mewling on the pavement for milk 'n' pilchards.

I loved nigel too.

Wasn't it Rita in Coronation Street who turned out to have a urinary infection, not dementia? !

I am a 55 year old woman. DM and I have been going through old photos and so on recently. I do say that quite often!!

I totally agree! That would be amazing!

Maybe he thought that the 14 year old shod had no sex ed, had been dumped by her mother, and sent away from home, might like a vaguely familiar face to help deliver her baby.

I thought the penultimate episode was better than the final one

@IbizaToTheNorfolkBroads that's what Rosalind was there for (and they really should have done some birthing prep/sex ed at the M&B home).
Dr T haring across the country to attend a birth really felt shoehorned in, in the early series the midwives got on with it, now Dr T seems to be at every birth mansplaining .
When does he find time to run his GP practice? The shots of the surgery have hardly anyone ever waiting and I doubt the people of Poplar have become that much healthier.
Perhaps the current NHS could harness this skill to get the waiting lists down, or maybe it’s a skill unique to Dr T.

I found the child giving birth storyline uncomfortable, the girl looked younger than 14 😢

She would have been so high risk to give birth naturally, I was thinking in rl she would have definitely been shipped off to the local hospital.

Shipped off to the local hospital for what? I'm sure they wouldn't give her caesarian and leave her with a scar for life. She was in a house full of midwives. I found it quite convincing and it was meant to be upsetting.

I think also that hardly anyone had a caesarian section in 1970 so it seems ulikely it would be offered to someone 'just' because they were young (and at a time when older midwives would have seen multiple young girls at around the same age, or even younger, have children).

I am still enjoying it despite the various flaws we can all find out. In the latest one it certainly took me back to the peace, light, calm of the rather wonderful convent attached to my private primary school which was run by nuns in the 1960s although ours were Catholic not C of E and most of my teachers were not nuns. I particularly liked the ceremony at the mother house on the latest episode.

The girl who had just turned 14 was an interesting story line. I don't think the programme quite shows the utter change in morals from those days to now. It presents it in a rather weak way. You would not have had loads of people really happy that someone who had had children by 2 fathers and was now getting married having had even the 2nd child out of wedlock. Indeed as someone said above, the marriage would have been at 3 months if not earlier to hide the pregnancy entirely.

I agree with the person above that some of the racism is not described as badly at it was (not that everyone was racist then of course - my parents never were and I never remember the nuns at school being so).

However I love the way there is always a happy ending so I don't really mind if they make things nicer to suit 2025 tastes.

I remember surprised by how clean all the clothes are people wear. In 1970 people were very short of money and things were not as easy as portrayed.

Perhaps in the next series, someone could tell the ‘pregnant’ actresses that no one in real life holds their ‘bump’ as though it’s about to slip down from under their dress. We understand you’re supposed to be expecting - you don’t have to signal it with the two hand grip!

Watched the whole episode now.

Can't see the point of the Nancy storyline. She also seems to regressed... she was so capable in the last series. Now she's back to how she was.

Loved Sr Catherines storyline

Teenage girl was heartbreaking... so naive compared to modern teenagers.

Also... who rescues a massive hamster cage (can understand grabbing the hamsters) in a fire?