Quick! Don't Call the Midwife! Bring me a Tissue instead!

Jenny and her bike on a mission to deliver babies and perfect her fifties hairstyle.

So the second season of 'Call the Midwife' is back on TV this week and last night I actually managed to convince my husband (not a fan of period dramas or televised birth scenes) to watch an episode. Good thing I did too, because I needed someone to comfort me while I wept openly at the end of the hour long drama, in which 3 women gave birth and midwives yet again proved themselves to be members of the most amazing profession in the world.
Apart from other professions that save lives (firemen, ambulance drivers, A&E doctors and at certain times of extreme stress, hostage negotiators or social workers), is there a profession any more noble than midwifery? Midwives are there in a mother's hour of most desperate need to offer support and usher new life into this world. And in 'Call the Midwife,' they do all of the above while also riding a bicycle through the busy streets of London's East End in the 1950s and wearing a cute nurse's cap. I can't stand the sight of blood or the idea of witnessing an actual birth and even I want to be a midwife after watching the show.

Based on the memoirs of a 'real-life midwife,' Jennifer Worth, 'Call the Midwife' is produced by Neal Street Productions for BBC Drama and it never fails to amaze me with its production values. The detail in the period costumes and 1950s sets is fantastic. The storytelling is also very good, with the show examining not just the emerging postwar NHS neonatal healthcare and developments in obstetrics but also other social issues of the 1950s such as marriage, poverty, pediatrics and the role of women among the docks of the East End of London. Every episode seems realistic, (probably as a result of being based on a real person's memoirs), good things happen but so do bad things. People die, get sick and even sometimes the babies are born with problems. But then people also fall in love, marry and get on with living their lives despite the difficult circumstances they find themselves in. The show can of course be a bit overly sentimental. Hey, its no 'The Wire' or 'The Killing.' But it's about childbirth and lets, be honest, who wants to take a harsh cynical view of midwives. We love midwives remember? After all, at once point, we all came into contact with one at the hour of our own birth.

Anyway, back to the show. The Christmas Special episode had me bawling so much I had to take a break halfway through to make a cup of tea and get a tissue. The story of the special shown on Christmas Day centered not only on birth, but also on the themes of poverty and social care. An old lady found wandering the streets is taken in by the midwives and the nuns that run the local hospital. As she is cared for, her tragic past is slowly revealed. In her youth (around 1906) she was widowed and unable to care for both herself and her five children, she was admitted to the workhouse and her children removed from her care. Due to disease and neglect in the workhouse, all her children died one by one. The saddest scene of the episode was when Jenny, the main character of the show, takes the old lady to the mass pauper's grave that her children are buried in to try to give her some closure to her grief. It was really heart-wrenching stuff and perhaps a bit too upsetting for Christmas Day, but it pleased me none the less, as I feel that it is the stories of people like Jenny and the old lady that are rarely told in TV and film. Everyday people with small but never the less important lives.

Of course, even the happy stories in the series make me cry. All the babies being born in each episode and the mothers looking so happy, sends me right over the edge and will have me scooting across the living room to grab a tissue. Where is my self control?! I guess I find being sad sometimes a bit cathartic. My husband thinks the whole thing is rather ridiculous, but even he was moved when watching the latest episode. I doubt I can get him to watch it next week however (he shows only a marginal interest in midwifery and childbirth understandably), so I have my box of tissues ready and the kettle set up in case I need a break for emotional relief and an emergency cup of tea.

Cynthia, Jenny and Trixie: Midwives in trench-coats.