The midwife, urgently] (in Greek). ERT online. Archived from the original on 23 November 2012 . Retrieved 7 November 2012. Should Doris have allowed Cyril to send away the baby she bore illegitimately? Did she have a choice? The first series was released in a Region 2, two-disc set on 12 March 2012. [40] Series two was released on 1 April 2013 in the UK (region 2) [41] with a collector's edition, Call the Midwife Collection, containing series one, two, and the 2012 Christmas Special, released on the same date. [42] This isn't like Jennifer Worth's first two books in the series, The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times and Shadows of the Workhouse. They were sweet memoirs of how hard it was in times gone by, but there were rays of sunshine, love and jollity to enliven the days. The books were fairly faithfully filmed as a sugar-candy feelgood somewhat addictive series.

Every new birth was my favorite experience, just the joy, the thrill, the privilege of bringing a new life into the world. I’ve had hundreds of “favorite experiences.” What a wonderful life.I preferred the format of this one compared to the second book, there was a lot more focus on Jenny's experiences, her patients, and midwifery in general. The author did a great job of wrapping the story up. With the midwives-in-training moving on to other jobs, and the nuns that they lived with in the convent living out their days. That being said, I actually came away from the book "Call the Midwife" feeling a little unsatisfied. I certainly enjoyed the stories that she told. Some were heart-breaking, some sweet or funny. I enjoyed the subplot about Jenny discovering a profound faith in God (though I found her a little unrevealing about other aspects of herself-- who is this man she loved so much?). The religious subplot is, sadly, conspicuously absent from the TV series.

All in all, this book revisits and exemplifies the lives of London’s East End in the face of adversity, and the poor working and living conditions which midwives experienced in London’s East End but the aid workers soldiered on for the betterment of the society. After taking care of Chummy's dying mother, Jenny decides to change careers and work with those who are at the end of life. She announces that she will be leaving Nonnatus House and midwifery to work as a nurse at the Marie Curie Hampstead Hospital. It is around this time that she meets Philip Worth, her future husband, who accompanies her as she leaves Nonnatus House for the last time, Jenny and Philip then marry. I had mixed feelings about Hilda's unwanted pregnancy — she already had loads of kids and the flat her family were living in was a dump, she and her husband couldn't cope with another baby. But what they did to the baby once it was born was awful. They were cruel to just let it drown in a chamber pot full of blood and afterbirth. Why couldn't they have left it at a church or the workhouse? Why did they have to let the baby die in such a horrific way? It was unforgivable what they did, no matter what their circumstances were. The books tell of a life with water from standpipes, no telephones in homes and babies delivered by candlelight. Similarly, the varying roles of the nurses of Nonnatus House—including home visits for the elderly and infirm as well as prenatal care—would have been representative of the kind of work nurses during the time period would have done as part of the National Health Service or NHS. The NHS was instituted after the end of WWII as part of the UK's welfare state in an effort to ensure that all Britains had access to medical care.Midwifery in the East End with some more youthful moments thrown in like friendships and a crazy night trip to Brighton! While St. Raymond Nonnatus, for whom the show's house is named, is indeed the saint of midwives and pregnant women, the building the midwives of Poplar call home doesn't actually exist. For the first three series of the programme, the score and the title theme used were composed by Peter Salem, and since series four the music has been composed by Maurizio Malagnini. The orchestral score, mainly comprising strings and piano accompanies the emotional moments of the series, with Malagnini calling it a diary of the emotions of the series, while more upbeat moments are often accompanied by music appropriate to the setting year. The score was performed by the London Chamber Orchestra. [19] [20]