A Review of the Book "Call the Widwife" by Jennifer Worth

Title: Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times
Author: Jennifer Worth
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Year: 2002
319 pages

Midwives were commonplace once upon a time, but with advances in medicine they seem to have gone by the wayside. Where home births used to be frequent and hospitals used only in emergencies, now it's all about the hospitals and home-births tend to be frowned upon.

However, even with hospital births, there is a resurgence of the desire to have a midwife throughout pregnancy and at childbirth, likely due to the lack of accessibility to doctors (my opinion, I did not fact check).

"Call the Widwife" is a memoir that provides a great look into midwifery in the mid-20th century. Jennifer Worth trained as a nurse and then a midwife in post-WWII England and began her work as a midwife at Nonnatus House, a convent in the "heart of the London Docklands" (page 1). Interestingly, midwives and nuns worked quite closely together.

It was surprising to read about what types of situations midwives had to deal with - the frequency of home-visits, the complicated births that many women today would be terrified to experience outside of a hospital, and then all sorts of post-natal care. What takes multiple persons now - nurse, OBGYN, family doctor, pediatrician - was mostly done by a single midwife. Not that doctors weren't involved, but the main actor was definitely the midwife.

Secondary in the story was Worth's experience living and working with Catholic nuns. As a self-professed non-believer, she wrote about how she was intrigued by the monastic life the nuns led, and how they had no qualms about getting into the dark and dirty of their patients' lives so that they could provide compassionate and loving care for mother and baby. Based on the end of the book, the experience appeared to be live-altering for Worth.

Worth's writing pulls you into the story so well that you can easily imagine being by her side throughout the book. When the book ends, you long to hear more about all of the characters. I was pleased to discover that "Call the Midwife" was not Worth's only publication so now I just may have to find the rest of her books!