Call the Midwife: A True Story of the East End in the 1950S

were no bigger than a couple of daisy petals. A tiny tongue came out and licked the fluid. She repeated this about six or eight times, then tucked him back between her breasts.
     
    Len said: “She’s bin doin’ this every ’alf ’our since six o’clock. Then they both ’ave a little sleep, an’ she does it agen. She said ’e won’t die, and ’e won’t, yer know. She knows ’ow to look after ’im.”
     
    I checked that she was not bleeding unduly, and left. I had to get back to Nonnatus House to report, and to request a district nurse to monitor the blood transfusion when it arrived. The smog was beginning to lift, and one could just about see across the road. It felt as though the world was filling with new life as the foul smog cleared, and I cycled back with a light heart.
     
    Sister Julienne herself prepared a huge breakfast of double bacon and eggs for me “to keep the wolf from the door”, as she put it, and then took my report in the dining room whilst I was eating. She said, “I have never cared for such a premature baby myself, but a Sister in one of our other Houses has experience. We will consult her. Conchita will have to be watched very carefully for further blood loss.”
     
    She found the whole story astonishing, and said, quietly, “God’s will be done.” She then went away to make arrangements for covering the blood transfusion.
     
    Conchita didn’t lose any more blood. After the transfusion colour returned to her cheeks, and also to Len’s. She was weak, but all danger had passed. The baby lay on her breast, day and night, fed in the manner that I have described about every half hour. All the lay staff and Sisters from Nonnatus House came to see the two of them, it was such a beautiful and unusual sight. On the fourth day I weighed the baby in a handkerchief. He was 1 lb. 10 oz.
     
    After three weeks, Conchita began to get up for short periods. I had thought ahead, and had wondered what would happen to the baby. Obviously Conchita had also been thinking ahead, and knew exactly what was to be done. She had asked Liz to acquire from the dressmakers several lengths of the finest unbleached silk. With the help of her skilled eldest daughter, she fixed a kind of sling or firm blouse around her shoulders and breasts, tight underneath, but loose above. The baby was carried in this for five months, between his mother’s breasts, never leaving her.
     
    Who had taught her this? I have never before or since, in any literature, heard of such a way of caring for a premature baby. Was it purely maternal instinct? I remembered back to the delivery, and to her monumental struggle when they tried to take the baby. I had the impression then that she was trying to think, trying to remember something; and the sudden clarity and conviction with which she said, ” No morir á.”
     
    Had she remembered seeing a peasant or gypsy woman carrying a tiny premature baby like this when she was a child in Southern Spain? Had this fleeting memory of times half forgotten been the cause of her conviction that her baby would not die?
     
    Some years later, when I was night sister at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital in Euston, I cared for several premature babies of about the same gestation and weight. They were all nursed in incubators, and I do not remember any fatalities. The hospital staff prided themselves on the excellent modern care which preserved the life of the baby. The hospital way, and Conchita’s way, are poles apart. Incubator babies are alone, day and night, lying flat on a firm surface, usually in strong light. Only hands and clinical equipment touch the baby. Food usually comes as formula cow’s milk. Conchita’s baby was never alone. He had the warmth, the touch, the softness, the smell, the moisture of his mother. He heard her heartbeat and her voice. He had her milk. Above all, he had her love.
     
    Possibly today, her decision to refuse hospitalisation for the baby would have been over-ruled by Court Order, the assumption being that only trained staff and advanced technology can adequately care for a premature child. In the 1950s we were less intrusive into family life, and parental responsibility was respected. I am forced to the conclusion that modern medicine does not know it all.
     
    Admittedly Conchita was lucky. The speed of delivery might have caused brain damage to the baby, but this did not occur. Apart from that, the great danger for a premature baby arises