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

counted. Where was it I had read, in some ancient manual for the Instruction of Women attending the Lying-in : “If a woman is in labour for more than ten or twelve days, you should seek a doctor’s aid”? Ten or twelve days of obstructed labour, in the hands of an untrained woman! Dear heaven - was there no mercy, no understanding? I had to shut such agonising thoughts out of my mind, and quietly thank God that obstetric practice had moved on. Yet even in my training days, the most up-to-date textbooks taught that a woman with a rachitic pelvis should have a ‘trial labour of eight to twelve hours to test the endurance of both mother and foetus’.
     
    Brenda had been subjected to four such trial labours in the 1930s. Why on earth, after the first disaster, it had not been agreed that she should have a Caesarean section for the delivery of subsequent babies, I could not imagine. Possibly she could not afford to pay for it, because, before 1948, all medical treatment had to be paid for.
     
    Brenda’s husband had been killed on active service in the war in 1940, so she had not had any more pregnancies. However, at the age of forty-three she had married again, and now she was pregnant once more. Her joy and excitement at the prospect of a living baby seemed to fill the antenatal clinic, and throw everything else into shadow. She called out: “Allo’, sis, ah’s yerself?” to everyone in sight, and to queries about her health, she responded, “I’m wonderful. Never bin better. On top ’o the world all the time.”
     
    I followed her over to the couch, and it stabbed my heart to see her little bow legs struggling to carry her. With each step the right leg in particular bent outwards, and her left hip swung precariously in the opposite direction. I had to arrange two stools and a chair before she could climb on to the couch, but she managed it, with awkward movements. It was painful to see. She was panting, and beaming in triumph when she got up. It seemed that every difficulty in life was a challenge to her, and every one successfully overcome was an occasion for rejoicing. She was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good-looking woman, but I was not at all surprised that she had found a second husband who, I had no doubt, loved her.
     
    Brenda was only six months pregnant, but her abdomen looked abnormally large, due to her tiny stature, and also to the inward curving of the spine, which pushed the uterus forward and upwards. She could feel movements, and I could hear the foetal heartbeat. Her pulse and blood pressure were normal, but her breathing was laboured. I remarked on it.
     
    “Don’t mind me. That’s nothing much,” she said cheerfully. I did not feel confident about examining Brenda’s misshapen body, so I asked Sister Bernadette to confirm, which she did. Brenda was as healthy as could be expected, and was carrying a healthy foetus.
     
    We saw her every week for the next six weeks, and she struggled on with increasing difficulty, using two sticks to help her get about. Her happiness never left her and she never complained. At thirty-seven weeks she was admitted to The London Hospital for bed rest, and a Caesarean section was successfully carried out at thirty-nine weeks.
     
    A fine healthy daughter was delivered, whom she called Grace Miracle.
     

ECLAMPSIA
     
     
     
    Throughout history, and until after the end of the Second World War in 1945, most babies were born at home. Then the drive for hospital delivery started, and it was so successful that by 1975 only one per cent of babies were born at home. The district midwife became very nearly an extinct species.
     
    The fashion, or trend, is reversing slightly today, and the home birth rate is around two per cent. Perhaps this is because hospital delivery presents new and totally unexpected risks for mother and baby, and people are getting wise to this fact.
     
    Sally came to us because she believed her mother more than she believed the doctor, who had advised hospital for her first baby.
     
    Her mother had said, “Nark ’im. You go to the Nonnatuns, luvvy. They’ll see yer right.”
     
    Gran had stepped in, too, with a wealth of ancient folklore, and hair-raising stories about the lying-in infirmaries, which used to be feared more than death itself by women.
     
    In vain the doctor tried to convince Sally that modern hospitals were not like the old infirmaries, but he was no match for Mum and Gran, so he retired from