Call The Midwife was an excellent book. I have not watched any of the television series or even heard about it until reading the book. I can see how this would be perfect to make into a television series though. Because it talks about different women and their families over the course of their pregnancies and childbirth. There could be an endless number of episodes.
Had you ever thought about what London was like after WWII? This book is set in post WWII London on the east end near the docks. London was bombed heavily during WWII. So much so that they sent most of the children to the countryside. However, I never thought about what it was like after the war when there was not as much housing in the cities and there were more people. During the war people were constantly trying to get out of the mainland of Western Europe to evade Hitler. And many of those people ended up in England and London specifically.
We read in one of the huge history textbooks that I read you all earlier this year, that women in America mostly relied on each other for help with giving birth during the 1800s and early 1900s. This was because people were so spread out. But in the cities they had midwives. And here the practice of midwives was almost put to an end because Doctors wanted to take over that part of the medical industry. This was because midwives would help women abort unwanted pregnancies naturally and many other reasons. This gave women too much control over their bodies and the next generation. And men wanted this control. This took place around the same time slavery was ended here in the United States.
Apparently this did not happen as much in England? This book makes it seem like women and midwives were in charge of prenatal care and delivering babies until the 1970s-ish. Honestly, it makes no sense to have a baby in a hospital where people go to die. I forget where it was. But when babies first started being born in hospitals, they were dying at alarming rates. It was because the medical students that were helping with the births were dissecting cadavers right before they were delivering babies. At this point they did not know that germs could be passed from the dead bodies onto the babies. Google says this was in the 19th century, aka the 1800s. Why would anyone want to have a baby where people go to die? It just seems counterintuitive! I understand not wanting to have a baby at home either. That would be rather messy. But a birthing center seems like the logical thing to do. Maybe I am missing a variable of this equation having never had children. But having a child in the same building that people are dying in seems wrong.
The midwife in Call The Midwife works for an organization run by nuns. And she is not religious when she first arrives. That would be an interesting dynamic. Can you imagine going to live and work with nuns? I know I would be uncomfortable and I am more open than most to say the least. I may not be religious, but in order to survive my life I have had to become a bit of a Buddhist monk. Spirituality is very important to me. Being in sync with the higher realms is important to me. I have referred to this as divine order over the past few years. It is hard to explain how to find this Zen or direction. Or even how to find one’s purpose or calling. But this book did it just right.
“Questions, questions — you wear me out with your questions, child. Find out for yourself — we all have to in the end. No one can give you faith. It is a gift from God alone. Seek and ye shall find. Read the Gospels. There is no other way. Do not pester me with your everlasting questions. Go with God, child; just go with God.”
I have read endless religious texts. My Dad got me a copy of the Bible when I was around 7 or 8 and I read it just as I read any other book. It was a story and there is always something to learn from everyone’s story or their experiences. It is the same reason I read these books. There is something to be learned from everyone. You just have to be open to it. I am not a religious person. I don’t believe in religion really. It is a human construct used to control people. But I do enjoy religious texts. And I do not believe that you can fully learn spirituality from someone else. I think it is an inner process and journey that you have to explore on your own. When someone else says to have the key to something inside of you, they are normally lying and trying to control you. You should find the keys to the things inside you that you seek. Otherwise someone else will be controlling you with those keys.
I would watch this show and I will have to check out the other books in this series. I think they will be good. I may never have children and I am completely okay with that. But childbirth is a time when other people tend to tell women they have the keys to this experience that is prewired in them. Fear and pain are used to break people. If you give into the fear and pain of hard times or experiences they will break you. I may never have experienced childbirth, but I am a bit of an expert on pain and people trying to break me. You were designed to not only survive, but you were designed to thrive and evolve. You just have to find the keys within you.
They are poisoning me and making me naseaus, that’s all I got for now.