Call the midwife

[NimbleHiker]

The Christmas special of call the midwife is on bbc 1 in 2 parts again. The first part is on at 20:15 on Christmas day and the second part is on at 20:30 on boxing day. I am not a fan of the Christmas special been in 2 parts. I wonder how doctor Turner and his simpering wife will save the world.

I liked her in the earlier series but i have gone off her.

I do. I can't do metric at all. I was taught it at school but it makes no sense to me.

When my daughter was born they told us her weight in kilogrammes but then said "do you want it in old money" (meaning pounds and ounces) 🤣
That was only 17 years ago. I have no clue what her kilogramme weight was.

To be fair to Dr T, every time I was prescribed anything for HG 18/15 years ago, I had to agreed that amI understood that the (various) drugs had not been tested on pregnant women. 15 years ago, one of our older GPs refused to give me a repeat prescription of whatever antiemetic is was, because he had delivered Thalidomide babies. I think it was correct for the period of Dr T to say that.

I also got the impress that the HG mum hadn’t told anyone other than her husband about how unwell she was until then, and was suffering in silence/just getting on with it- like me 18 years ago, it was her first ph, she didn’t know what was normal, especially without her mum around ((like me)(Alive and well but on an extended trip to Aus and NZ)).

I’m also an imperial woman. I have to convert recipes at times 😁

Me too @Coffeeandbooks88! Exactly one month before!

I had HG 47 years ago, all the way through till DS1 was born at 32 weeks. I was told then in 1979 that there was nothing i could have to help. As I was a nursery nurse who had briefly looked after a Thalidomide little girl i wouldnt have taken anything anyway.

DS1 was 6lb 4 at birth and 21 inches, he was in an incubator, and seeing that baby on CTM in one i remember how huge he looked compared with a tiny 28 weeker in the NICU with him.

14 months later I had DS2 at 28 weeks, again with HG all the way through, again there was nothing to eleviate it. He was 2lb 1oz and had spina bifida, which was a shock. We lost him at 36 hours.

10 years later in 1990 I had DD, again HG, this time i was given an antiemetic, i cant remember which one it was although i think it begain with a D. Things had moved on by then and I was not so worried about taking something. DD was born at 26 weeks and 1lb 12oz. We lost her at 23 hours.

This epusode brought back so much.

Ohh gosh @Megsdaughter .. how awful for you x 💐💐🌹🌹

I had it 1979/80. I was prescribed Debendox (?) but didn't take it. I lost nearly a stone in the first 3 months and put on no weight at all between 7 and 8 months. I wanted to eat a healthy diet but ate any junk I could keep down. I still can't eat oranges. My baby was a healthy 7lb 14oz. I left hospital in a pencil skirt.

Edit: sorry I didnt mean to quote that post. My experience was nothing like as bad. So sorry you went through that.

That was it! Yes, i ended up lighter at the end than i was at the beginning and i was only about 7.5st when i fell pg with DS1.
I was in hospital on a iv for 6 weeks up until 3 weeks before he was born.
DS2 i spent 8 weeks in hospital in total and had to have urine tests tgat i had to fill a gallon plastic jug so they coukd see how much I urinated.
With DD i was in hospital for most of the last 3 months as i just coukdntbkeep anything down. Again on a iv and fed complan in little sips all day.

How awful for you.

There are no words @Megsdaughter. Sending love.

Mine was born 4 days after

Would love to know how the money crossover happened.in small shops .

Big shops has the infrastructure.

Little shops just had Fred and Violet .

Did they have help for this big thing ?

I doubt it! Decimalisation was a huge thing. I was 9. We spent a lot of time on it in school, so we found it easy, but many adults hated it. There were public information films designed to help the public prepare. The conversion from old money happened overnight, IIRC, and for months the papers were full of letters complaining that prices had gone up as a result, because naturally everything had been rounded up, not down.

I was 7 so didn’t really know much about ‘old’ money but I remember learning about it in school and I remember the thruppeny and sixpenny bit. My outstanding memory of it is being in the little shop opposite primary school (sawdust on the floor, potatoes in hessian sacks and the best frozen homemade lollipops) with my DM the week it happened and we were allowed to spend 2 1/2 np (the old sixpenny bit). A Mars bar or Marathon was now out of my reach at 3np whereas I could have afforded it the week before at 6d.

I was 11 so had learned a lot of old money sums including guineas. Decimal money seemed to come in smoothly.
In Ireland for years there was parity of systems so either coins and notes could be used. I was about 21 when that ended!
Then I was in RoI for euro roll out. For a couple of years finance things and bills quoted the euro price...and we were given a little calculator with 1.27 as exchange rate.

I'm only in my 30s but my dad taught me "old money" as a mental arithmetic exercise.

Was the old pound equal to the new pound on decimal day? Just the value of the penny changed?

Yes the value of the pound was the same. The constituent coins changed. They were called New Pence to distinguish from old pennies. That continued for about 10 years then the coins were minted just with pence not new pence.

I mean the value of the New Penny was different from the old penny, not just the name and the coins.

A couple of years before decimalisation came in, I was 7 and had obviously missed the instruction to ignore the pounds shillings and pence sums in my maths book. I did a whole page and my teacher was so cross with me.

I had a Saturday job in a photographer's shop. We had stickers on the old till and a conversion chart. Luckily I was doing my O Levels and was used to switching back and forth. I didn't find it difficult older people struggled more. Re-reading what I've just said I don't know what purpose the stickers on the till served but I'm sure they were there. They probably served no purpose at all but the boss thought it was a good idea.

5 new pence was a shilling so a twentieth of a pound. 10 new pence was two shillings etc. An old sixpence was 2.5p. It was all the in-between things got rounded up.
We won't mention half crowns. A half crown was untold wealth!

I remember decimalisation coming in. we had a little card to help.
crisps were 2 1/2 new pence.

New coins to get used to as well! That was a huge deal back when almost everything was paid for in cash. I think only a minority of the population had bank accounts and cheque books. There were no cheque guarantee cards, far less debit cards, so it was a risk for a shopkeeper to take a cheque as it might bounce. Credit cards and charge cards like American Express were just starting to be used in the UK and probably not widely accepted or even understood.

Feeling absolutely ancient contemplating all of this!

On another note, the psychedelic nylon blouses were absolutely spot on. Exactly how I remember many of my younger teachers dressing around that time.