Story Description:
Penguin Books
USA|September 4, 2012|Trade Paperback|ISBN: 978-0-14-312325-5
Jennifer Worth was
just twenty-two when she volunteered to spend her early years of midwifery
training in London’s East End in the 1950’s.
Coming from a sheltered background there were tough lessons to be
learned. The conditions in which many
women gave birth just half a century ago were horrifying.
My Review:
At Nonnatus House
lived a long list of midwives and was situated in the heart of the London
Docklands. The practice covered a wide
area from Stephney to Limehouse to Millwall to the Isle of Dogs and
beyond. Family life was lived in close
quarters and children brought up by a widely extended family of aunts,
grandparents, cousins, and older siblings, all living with a few houses of each
other. Often families of up to nineteen
lived in 3 rooms and the conditions were deplorable. Fleas and lice were common pests. There was no transportation in those days so
the midwives rode bicycles to the homes of their patients to deliver
babies. Riding a bicycle through rain,
thick fog, and freezing temperatures at two or three in the morning was no
picnic I’m sure.
Children were
everywhere, and streets were their playgrounds.
In the 1950’s there were no cars on the back streets, because no one had
a car, so it was safe to play there. In
some very overcrowded houses, domestic violence was expected. But gratuitous violence was never heard of
towards the elderly. People worked hard
for their money, working long eighteen hour days unloading crates at the
docks. Employment was high, but wages
were low.
Early marriage was
the norm and most families had fourteen to nineteen children until the
introduction of the pill in the 1960’s and the modern woman was born. Women were no longer tied to the cycle of
endless babies. In the late 1950’s there
were 80-100 deliveries per month and in 1963 that number dropped to 4 or 5 a
month! Nursing and midwifery were in a
deplorable state and was not considered a respectable occupation for any
educated woman. In the nineteenth
century no poor woman could afford to pay the fee required by a doctor for the
delivery of her baby. So she was forced to rely on the services of an
un-trained, self-taught midwife, or “handywoman.” Finally in 1902 the first Midwives Act was
passed and the Royal College of Midwives was born. The work of the Midwives of St. Raymund
Nonnatus was based upon a foundation of religious discipline.
Jennifer Worth
first met with the Midwives of St. Raymund Nonnatus in the 1950’s and it turned
out to be the best experience of her life. At first, Jennifer wondered why she’d
ever started this midwifery thing – she could have been anything: a model, air
hostess, or a ship’s stewardess but there she is at 2:30 in the morning riding
her bicycle through the rain soaked streets on her way to a delivery after a
17-hour work day and only 3 hours sleep.
As she arrives at
the home of her patient, she is greeted by a congregation of women –the patient’s
mother, two grandmothers, two or three aunts, sisters, best friends, and a
neighbour. In the middle of this gaggle
of women is a solitary man. The patient
is, Muriel, a girl of twenty-five who is having her fourth baby. Jennifer realizes quickly that Muriel is
nearing the end of her second stage of labour.
As Jennifer prepares to conduct an internal exam, she sees another pain
come upon her – you can see it building in strength until it seems her poor
body will break apart. Jennifer readies
her tray of equipment – scissors, cord clamps, cord tape, fetal stethoscope,
kidney dishes, gauze, cotton swabs and artery forceps. Muriel’s pains are coming every 3 minutes now
and suddenly her water breaks and floods the bed. With the next contraction Jennifer can see
the head. More and more contractions
come and the head is coming fast, too fast!
She tells Muriel to pant, the head is out and she is just delivering the
shoulders. Finally the baby slides out
and it’s a boy! Jennifer is excited, she
now understands why she does this job.
She steps outside in the bright morning sunlight with plans to return to
see the new mother again at noon hour and once more in the evening. However, as you will read, not all her
deliveries go quite so well.
Jennifer’s life
developed from a childhood disrupted by war, a passionate love affair at only
age sixteen, and the knowledge three years later that she had to get away. So, for “purely pragmatic reasons, my choice
was nursing.” Does she regret it? “Never, never, never. I wouldn’t swap my job for anything on earth.”
Call the Midwife is an honest look at
midwifery in the 1950’s and 1960’s and the deplorable conditions that these
women were forced to bear their children under.
Without Midwives, I don’t know what these women would have done. I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir and read it
in one sitting.
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