Call The Midwife Series 3 Episode 5

As I’ve said here several times before, I love Call The Midwife. I watch it for entertainment and have done since it started. I didn’t start out thinking I would write about it, here or anywhere.

But there is something I love more than a good drama. That is a good drama that covers disability.

Call The Midwife have, to my great pleasure, covered disability several times before over series 2 and 3. However, each time this has been through disabled children or babies.

In next week’s episode, the programme will set out to cover a different aspect of disability- the very important issue of disability, specifically Downs Syndrome, and pregnancy.

When a young woman with Down’s syndrome is discovered pregnant, sinister circumstances are assumed. Meanwhile, as the nuns organise celebrations for Sister Evangelina’s jubilee, Nonnatus House greets new midwife Patsy. Elsewhere, Timothy Turner takes his first steps without his callipers.

Considering that the programme is set in the 1950s and 1960s, when attitudes to the issues it will raise were so different to what they are today, it is difficult to tell how the topic will be covered.

However, the entire team at the programme must be thanked for attempting to cover the topic at all. Because considering that the programme is set in the 1950s and 1960s, when attitudes to the issues it will raise were so different to what they are today, it comes as an unexpected, but very pleasant, surprise to me that they chose to cover it.

As a woman disabled since birth who has grown up, mostly, in a time when women with all disabilities are supported through their pregnancies, and when many such pregnancies are much wanted, I am personally hoping that the episode will raise the topic in a way that will teach today’s audience about attitudes to the issues at the time.

However I also hope that the issues will be covered positively, so that viewers will come away from the episode realising  that there is nothing wrong today with any disabled woman becoming pregnant and even, with support, keeping and raising her baby.

Updated 3pm: More details of the episode here. In terms of the actors, I’m thrilled that they both have the disabilities they will portray. (The father will have CP).

However in terms of the storyline of the episode, it seems that I will not be so thrilled. I do hope the ending proves me wrong.