CALL THE MIDWIFE by Jennifer Worth

This was the most marvellous surprise. Such a surprise and so good that I have put it in my top ten reads for 2019. As brilliant as the TV series is,  the book is so much better full of  background detail and vivid writing about life in the London East End of the 1950s. We see the poverty and deprivation on TV, the conditions midwives had to work under, but of course it is all pretend and  made to look authentic as none of the people involved were actually there. Whereas the author Jennifer Worth was. Life in post war Britain was grim,  and in areas like the East End it was really grim.

Nothing like being on the ground doing the work, and remembering enough to write so meticulously, in such an engaging way, and with plenty of background material to give a us a full picture of life as a midwife at this time. Midwifery training in hospital would have borne no resemblance to the hands on, diverse and challenging home births that these  young women were faced with and expected, often, to deal with on their own. A huge learning curve for them, and for the reader.

For example she writes a whole chapter on Rickets - a growth problem caused by a lack of vitamin D. That is all I knew about rickets, and had no idea how common it was at the time. Jenny tells the story of a woman who has lost pregnancies due to the deformities to her body as a result of rickets. Finally she manages to carry a baby to term and to give birth. What a celebration. These were times when contraception was almost non-existent. Women spent all their reproductive years pregnant or giving birth, in households with little or no money, lots of children, dreadful living conditions. Somehow these impoverished and neglected Victorian-aged neighbourhoods thrive and grow. Everyone looks after each other: it really is the village raising the child and people helping each other.

Jenny writes another chapter on a homeless woman who somehow manages to turn up at many of the births Jenny attends. She spends some time digging around for the woman's back story, and we learn the sad life of this poor woman  who lost so much during the great depression of the 1930s, her story probably not much different from that of  many other people.

At the same time we also read about the other midwives that Jenny lives with at Nonnatus House and the nuns too. Wonderful women so fantastically brought to life in the TV series. Jenny herself also grows up from the young graduated midwife never having set foot in the East End or any area like it to a competent, highly respected and loved practitioner along with her fellow midwives, including the total misfit Chummy so perfectly played by Miranda Hart.

I have new respect for the profession of the mid wife, especially in the time being written about,  when it wasn't so politicised like it is now, and both doctors and midwives worked together for the health of both mother and baby.

This is a wonderful book to read if you have enjoyed the series, and gives so much to our understanding and appreciation of what these women did, the neighbourhoods they lived and worked in, and above all the people they worked for.