Call the Midwife (on PBS in the US)

[PennySycamore]

Tonight's episode was just wonderful!  

You find out why a Chinese mother-in-law gets angry when her daughter-in-law pulls out a lock of black hair hidden in a picture frame of her son.

Spoiler

When her new granddaughter is in the hospital suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning, the grandmother relates how she gave birth on the run from the Japanese during the Second World War.  She held the new baby to her skin to keep the baby warm, but it was pouring rain and the baby died of hypothermia.  The lock was the baby's hair which she bitten off and placed next to her heart.  

I love Phyllis!  Love Sister Monica Joan, too.

[vspielman]

On 3/28/2017 at 10:17 PM, PennySycamore said:

@send*the*ferrets, when I lost my baby in 1988, we got to see Katherine after she died.  That might have always been the case, but you're right that years earlier, that parents weren't allowed the see their stillborn babies.  When Katherine died, it was thought to be healing to view the body, but IIRC, there has been some more recent research that this is not the case.  I'm not sure what present practice is.  I do think that any parents who want to see and hold their dead child should be permitted to do so.

We lost one in 2005.  My husband chose to see him.  I chose not to see him.  Neither of us regrets the choice we made, and we were grateful that we were each allowed to make our own, extremely personal, choice.  I am so sorry for your loss.

[Hmmm_idolatry]

Oh, I love this show.  It's one of the best things on TV, IMO.   Every week, I have to get the tissues ready because this show has me crying tears of joy and sadness.  Last night's episode was great.  I kind of want Sister Monica Joan to come over to my house and watch TV with me.  

Nothing but love to you @vspielman and @PennySycamore and everybody else in this thread who has lost a baby.  

[PennySycamore]

Was last night's episode the one you has mentioned a few weeks ago, @send*the*ferrets?

Spoiler

A pregnant mom in the bed beside Shelagh goes into labor right before she is to get a cerclage so that she might not deliver prematurely.  Her baby is stillborn.  She does ask Shelagh if babies born at the stage of pregnancy have their fingers and toes.  This footage of of poor woman losing her baby is intercut with scenes of another mom having her baby christened.

I wish my Brownie leader daughter could have seen the scenes of the Brownie Guides.  What type of Boy Scouts in the green uniforms was Phyllis leading?  Cubs?  Regular Boy Scouts?

[Blahblah]

@PennySycamore they are called Wolf Cubs. The name was changed to Cub Scouts in the mid to late 1960's. 

[PennySycamore]

3 hours ago, Blahblah said:

@PennySycamore they are called Wolf Cubs. The name was changed to Cub Scouts in the mid to late 1960's. 

That explains why I've always seen wolves on the Cub Scout logo.

[PennySycamore]

On tonight's episode (season 6, episode 5):

Spoiler

Fred and Violet take in their nephew, Reggie, a young men with Down Syndrome.  Reggie's mum collapsed and died during church.  Fred and Violet first think about institutionalizing Reggie after he turns on the gas in the apartment and then (fortunately) locks himself out.  Fred with Sister Monica Joan investigate Linchmere Hospital and discover it's not much different from the Snake Pit and it's no place for Reggie.  On the way out, Sister Monica Joan sees Sister Mary Cynthia and knows that she has to get her out.  Dr Turner helps to set up a dental clinic in Poplar after seeing a pregnant mother's badly decayed teeth.  Reggie helps Fred with his work gardening but misses having friends his own age.   Shelagh sees a newspaper article about a village for Down Syndrome people so that they can live semi-inpendently and gives it to the Buckles.  Trixie and the dentist go out on a date and Sister Winifred gets Phyllis to give her driving lessons.  Oh, and in the beginning of the episode, Sister Monica Joan greets the new midwife, Valerie Dyer, by saying that she and Sister Evangelina had attended her birth  and that she had cut her cord.

I'm glad that we've got at least 3 more episodes this season and 3 more seasons to look forward to!

ETA:  I wish we had three more season of Home Fires to look forward to.  Alas, no!

Edited May 1, 2017 by PennySycamore

[Blahblah]

@PennySycamore I read recently that we haven't seen the last of Reggie. Could become a semi-regular character which is lovely! 

On another front, the timeline is moving into the mid-sixties. I was born at home in the U.K. with a midwife in attendance. It will be amazing to see what was in place around that time. Mum has told me that her midwife arrived late after getting lost in fog on her bike.

[PennySycamore]

@Blahblah,  I'll be glad if we haven't seen the last of Reggie!  I like him and Fred and Violet did too.

That is so cool that you were born at home in London in the mid-60s with a midwife in attendance.  I've never asked my friend Norma if she watches, but I wouldn't be at all surprised.  I've never asked her what part of London she is from, but I do know that it was someplace like Poplar.

[Blahblah]

@PennySycamore not born in London sadly. More northern  than that. But the services and equipment and uniforms would have been the same I think.

But my paternal grandparents and at least a couple of  generations before that came from Poplar so I do have a genetic connection to Poplar and a huge extended family as both of my Poplar grandparents had at least ten siblings. I'm sure that some of my relatives must have lived in the Poplar that is depicted in CtM. Which is kind of awesome. Not that living in squalor and poverty is awesome, obviously, but you know what I mean.

[PennySycamore]

Tonight was episode 6 of Series 6

Spoiler

The episode was set during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Valerie and Barbara are confronted by a pregnant woman from Somaliland who underwent female genital mutliation as a child.  Sister Mary Cynthia is sprung from that terrible mental hospital, but she is still not well. Dr Turner and Shelagh are talking about bringing a baby into such an uncertain world.  Dr Turner mentions that President Kennedy is also a father and that Jackie might even be pregnant which I think she was.  (Jackie lost that baby to prematurity)  Dr Turner tells Sister Mary Cynthia that he needed help after the War and arranges for her to go to Northfield Hospital near Birmingham where group therapy was pioneered.  Trixie has another date with her dentist and the Cuban Missile Crisis is averted.   The Somali mother's sister is sent to her homeland to undergo FGM, but the new mom decides that her own daughter will not be cut.  She also informs the nurses that a woman performed her FGM  and that she does not bear her husband's name.  Dr Turner and Shelagh move into their new home but without their furniture which was sent to Kent and with no electricity because Dr Turner has gotten the date wrong.   They had a campout in the new home.

It also was the season 2 finale of Home Fires.  How dare IT cancel the show and leave us hanging?  Bring Home Fires back!!

[PennySycamore]

10 hours ago, PennySycamore said:

Tonight was episode 6 of Series 6

  Reveal hidden contents

The episode was set during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Valerie and Barbara are confronted by a pregnant woman from Somaliland who underwent female genital mutliation as a child.  Sister Mary Cynthia is sprung from that terrible mental hospital, but she is still not well. Dr Turner and Shelagh are talking about bringing a baby into such an uncertain world.  Dr Turner mentions that President Kennedy is also a father and that Jackie might even be pregnant which I think she was.  (Jackie lost that baby to prematurity)  Dr Turner tells Sister Mary Cynthia that he needed help after the War and arranges for her to go to Northfield Hospital near Birmingham where group therapy was pioneered.  Trixie has another date with her dentist and the Cuban Missile Crisis is averted.   The Somali mother's sister is sent to her homeland to undergo FGM, but the new mom decides that her own daughter will not be cut.  She also informs the nurses that a woman performed her FGM  and that she does not bear her husband's name.  Dr Turner and Shelagh move into their new home but without their furniture which was sent to Kent and with no electricity because Dr Turner has gotten the date wrong.   They had a campout in the new home.

It also was the season 2 finale of Home Fires.  How dare IT cancel the show and leave us hanging?  Bring Home Fires back!!

Damn, I hate seeing a typo when it's too late to correct it.  I mean ITV, of course.  

[PennySycamore]

I was busy on Mother's Day and didn't write a recap of the latest episode.  The season ending regular episode is next week, IIRC.

Putting this under a spoiler in case anyone hasn't seen the episode yet.

Spoiler

One of the plot lines had to do with one of the Thalidomide families.  This little girl has phocomelia, but no other problems due to the drug.  Her mother wanted to take her to a center where she could be fitted with prosthetic limbs.  The dad was opposed but gradually came around.  At the center, they met a mother of a little boy who was born without arms.  That was bad enough, but then she found out that her son was also deaf.  What does a kid in that situation do? I can't imagine the hell that child will go through.  My granddaughter may be deaf, but at least she has her hands to communicate with.  (She also has cochlear implants, but she will be raised bi-lingually/bi-culturally.  As her dad says, she'll always be deaf.)  Another Thalidomide baby was born without eyes.  These parents formed a small support group.  Phyllis hit a child with her car on the way back from a birth.  The oldest brother of the new baby ran out in front of the car.  Eventually, Phyllis was cleared of any wrongdoing in the accident when the children admitted that they were playing where they weren't supposed to be.  This boy is a member of Phyllis's Cub pack.  Trixie found out that her dentist boyfriend has a daughter with his ex-wife and Trixie came out to him about her alcoholism.  Delia learned that Patsy's father had died in Hong Kong.

Maybe I should ask for DVDs of some of the seasons for a late Mother's Day present.

[PennySycamore]

Last night was the season finale (episode 8) of Call the Midwife.  I did not have a cup of tea as I mentioned I might in Minor Annoyances as I was still working on my diet Coke from dinner.  (I wasn't about to have one later, either, during Dark Angel, about the serial poisoner/murderer Mary Ann Cotton who liked to spike tea she brewed with arsenic.)  

Anyway, here's what happened in the episode:

Spoiler

Early on in the episode, Barbara learns that her vicar father has been assigned to do missionary work in New Guinea and he is leaving England in three weeks.  Since Barbara had always wanted her father to officiate at her wedding, she and Tom move the date of the wedding up three weeks.  Meanwhile, a mother (Wilma Goddens) in Poplar drops into Violet's shop to tell her about her new job as a corsetierre and also to tell Violet that she is on her way to the contraceptive clinic.   Wilma gets the Pill at the clinic.  Phyllis has a talk with Shelagh about slowing down as she prepares to deliver her baby and reminds her that one of her perqs for being a midwife is choosing her birth attendant.  She chooses Sister Julienne and Phyllis is disappointed.  Barbara is working on her wedding dress, falls asleep, and Valerie comes in and notices that the dress is rather a hot mess. (Nylon lace is tricky to work with.) The next morning at breakfast, Barbara gets a surprise:  the others had all gotten together and pooled their money so that Barbara can buy a wedding dress. Barbara asks Phyllis to be her bridesmaid and also learns to deal with her diaphragm. Wilma notices that Violet seems to be having hot flashes and tells her that she must be going through the Change.  She is also maybe taking more pills than she really should (she's seen doubling up once and she smokes, too which is not good).  Shelagh goes into labor and delivers a healthy baby boy with her husband at her back (literally. Dr Turner is supporting her while she pushes.  Meanwhile, Wilma suffers a pulmonary embolism and ends up in the hospital with a tracheostomy.  Tom comes to the hospital to give her the CoE equivalent of Last Rites and then Trixie put a little rouge and powder on Wilma and combs her hair before her family come in to say goodbye.  Violet drops off some navy hair ribbons for Wilma's little girls to wear to the funeral because she knew that Wilma always took care of how she and her girls looked.  Fred and the other men take Tom out of a guy's night out.  Fred comes back into the house with flowers for Violet  and with Reggie!  Barbara is lovely at her wedding, wearing a fur trimmed long cape and a simple, tasteful satin (maybe peau de soie) gown.  Peau de soie was commonly used for wedding gowns on that period.  Tom has a surprise for Barbara:  he has arranged for a carousel to be set up near Nonnatus House for the reception.  (She'd told Tom a touching story about a carousel earlier.)  Patsy comes back and tells Delia that she will never leave her again and they kiss.   As the reception goes on, it starts to snow.

Barbara's wedding gown reminded me a lot of Guinevere's white dress and cape in the film version of Camelot.  The musical was a big hit in the early 60s, but the film came out in 1967.  Vanessa Redgrave does the narration as an older Jenny in the series.

[Hane]

On 3/28/2017 at 4:16 PM, send*the*ferrets said:

I really need somebody watching along with me so I can go play by play 

edit- not related to Shalagh- my grandmother had a stillborn baby in 1962, she was not allowed to see the baby. 

My aunt had a stillborn baby that same year, and didn't see him. From what she told us, when she woke up from general anesthesia after her emergency c-section, it seems the ward was busy and the nurses were rushing around. She asked about seeing him, and a nurse said "it's just as well if you don't." Of course, that statement upset my aunt, but her doctor later told her that the baby was beautiful and healthy-looking, but had been born with a major heart defect.

It was several decades before she was able to talk about him.

On a more cheerful note: I was born in 1952, and am enjoying the great attention to period detail in the series, especially when it comes to fashion and hair styles. (I felt that way about "Mad Men," too.)

 

Edited May 24, 2017 by Hane
ETA more stuff.

[cindyluvs24]

I just borrowed Seasons 3-6 from the library and spent the last 2 weeks binge-watching.  Poplar looks like the Ironbound section of Newark, NJ  that my mother's family hails from.  I am amazed by the advances that we take for granted since then.

[Meowkitties]

I just caught up on this last season on Netflix. I had to ration it out so I didn't finish it all in one weekend. I started my nursing career as a labor and delivery nurse and now work in community health nursing.  Our program provides RN home visits for families with economic challenges throughout their pregnancy and the first two years of the child's life. 

Call the Midwife perfectly captures the complex beauty and challenges of supporting women through home visits. It gives me all the feels, and on really difficult days, reminds me why I love what I do!  

So glad there are other FJers who enjoy it as much as I! 

[Botkinetti]

Just an FYI.

The holiday Call the Midwife is on at 9 pm on Christmas night. My DVR is set up to record all new episodes but didn’t  schedule this episode to be recorded because it is titled Call the Midwife holiday special 2017. 

[Blahblah]

Anyone else watch the Christmas episode?

Spoiler

Tom and Barbara leaving? Only for 6 months but that’s what happened with Patsy and she never really came back properly.

Which brings me to my next point - no explanation of Patsy and Delia not being there? I know that the actors who play them have left the show, but for none of the other characters to even mention them? 

But at least we know the name of the Turners’ baby now.

 

[Bethella]

9 hours ago, Blahblah said:

Anyone else watch the Christmas episode?

I'm hoping we'll get actual answers once the season starts.

[libgirl2]

On 12/26/2017 at 5:31 AM, Blahblah said:

Anyone else watch the Christmas episode?

  Reveal hidden contents

Tom and Barbara leaving? Only for 6 months but that’s what happened with Patsy and she never really came back properly.

Which brings me to my next point - no explanation of Patsy and Delia not being there? I know that the actors who play them have left the show, but for none of the other characters to even mention them? 

But at least we know the name of the Turners’ baby now.

 

I did and spent most of the time crying. 

[Blahblah]

@libgirl2 love your avi! 

[libgirl2]

19 hours ago, Blahblah said:

@libgirl2 love your avi! 

Thank you! 

Edited January 3, 2018 by libgirl2

[Blahblah]

Season 7 Episode 7

Spoiler

I am in pieces. Another favourite character is gone. 

 

[Satan'sFortress]

Our new season starts March 25th here.

Mr. Fortress watches with me & I cry every episode. 

With a lot of unfavorable discussion about midwives happening on the Duggar board, it is nice to watch this show and remind myself of how much I loved my midwives and the excellent, very personal care they gave me during my two pregnancies (and regular "well-woman" care, also.)  I do understand why lots of women prefer doctors and hospitals, but my experience with midwives was just like it is on this show--they were so supportive and protective of me---I don't have the words to describe it.