Call The Midwife – Season 10, Episode 6

By: Ellie Yates

Nurse Lucille (Leonie Elliot) and Sister Frances (Ella Bruccoleri) rush to help Manju (Aryana Ramkhalawon) who has prematurely given birth to a healthy baby girl. However, some of the placenta is left in Manju’s womb and she needs to go to hospital urgently. This upsets Manju as, due to Sutak, only family should see women after birth. In a neighboring flat Sarita (Aysha Kala) is also ready to give birth and her husband Raj (Harki Bhambra), who was walking by Manju’s flat, tells her how the midwives saved Maju’s life. However, Sarita doesn’t want to accept any medical help.

After speaking with Lucille, Frances realizes that there are a lot of Asian women reluctant to seek medical help due to language barriers and having their family take care of them. Frances gets thinking about how Nonnatus can do more to help and speaks with Sister Julienne (Jenny Agutter) about putting on evening classes just for Asian mothers. Frances wants to hire a translator and notes that the classes will be beneficial to both the mothers and midwives. Whilst Sister Julienne agrees this is a sensible idea, they just don’t have the funding. If only there was a handsome, well-off man who wanted to thank one of the nurses with a donation…

If “professional flowers” in the last episode weren’t enough, Matthew Aylward (Olly Rix) offers to donate £100 to Nonnatus House. He tells Sister Julienne that after Trixie’s help he has seen just how invaluable the Order is. This money will surely be welcomed by Sister Frances to help with her classes, especially when her meeting with Violet (Annabelle Apsion) about funding from the council doesn’t go so well. Also welcome is Miss Higgins’ (Georgie Glen) offer to help as she seems to know a fair bit about Asian culture, even offering to translate information into Punjabi!

Raj calls at Nonnatus House as he is concerned about Sarita not accepting any medical help. He explains to Nurse Crane (Linda Bassett) that they are new to Poplar but have no family there. Nurse Crane gives Raj the phone number for Dr Turner (Stephen McGann) and says he will look after them. She tells Raj about the meeting for Asian mothers that Sister Frances is putting on and Raj says it’s best that Nurse Crane invites Sarita. Nurse Crane pays a visit to their flat and Sarita unconvincingly says she will try to get. Noticing all of the cleaning products Sarita has neatly arranged, Nurse Crane advises her to use white vinegar and a touch of soap as it works perfectly for half the price! After Nurse Crane leaves Sarita appears to have the beginning of a panic attack. After not turning up to the meeting, Sarita is again panicked by a train overhead on her walk home from the shops.

Back at her flat Sarita starts to clean the floor but causes a reaction with the cleaning chemicals she has mixed. Luckily, Raj arrives home and opens the windows. Raj begs her to think of the baby and Sarita tells him that she can’t stop thinking of what happened during the partition of India when she was a child. When Sarita suspects something is wrong with the baby Raj convinces her to see Dr Turner who tells her that the baby is fine, but she needs to stop using harmful chemicals. Sarita says that she needs to clean the floor to get rid of “the blood.” We learn that on the filthy train Sarita was put on during the Partition guards beat her mother until she was quiet before throwing her from the train and her aunt’s baby died after being born on the train. Dr Turner realizes that this trauma has caused her OCD. He promises to do everything they can to help Sarita and her baby. After Sister Frances pays her a home visit, Sarita decides to give birth in the maternity home and even visits Sister Frances’ group. Sarita later gives birth to a healthy baby boy.

At the clinic Trixie (Helen George) and Nancy (Megan Cusack) meet Cherry (Rebecca Lee) who is pregnant with her fifth child and keeps throwing up. Trixie notices a nasty bruise on Cherry’s arm which Cherry says she caught in the door. However, it transpires that Cherry’s recently unemployed husband, Pete (David Burnett), has been abusing her and he doesn’t take well to their current children being…well, children. Considering her husband’s angry reaction when he finds out she’s pregnant, and not wanting to bring another baby into the poverty they are currently living in, Cherry tries to abort her baby herself. This obviously doesn’t go well and Cherry ends up with a serious infection. When Cherry next visits the clinic Trixie asks Dr Turner to take a look and he prescribes her a course of antibiotics. Dr Turner tells Cherry she needs to be honest with him so they can treat her. Cherry admits to trying to use a skewer as that’s all she could find. Dr Turner asks to look at the cigarette burns on her hands and she says she did it. Cherry asks if she’ll be arrested and Dr Turner says that whilst abortion is against the law, there’s nothing to be gained from him reporting this. However, Cherry needs to understand how fatal it could have been.

On the subject of abortions, Trixie writes a letter to The Times in support of the Abortion Reform Bill. Shelagh (Laura Main) worries that people might not take kindly to this, but Dr Turner is impressed that Trixie is standing up for what she believes in. It doesn’t go down too well at Nonnatus though, resulting in a phone call from Mother Mildred. The house receives another phone call this time from the BBC for Trixie. They have invited her onto a radio program to discuss the Bill. Trixie somehow gets Mother Mildred’s blessing to take part in the radio show as herself, not a part of Nonnatus. The midwives, Buckles and Turners listen in as Trixie is spoken over by the three men who are against the Reform Bill and think that if the law on abortion is changed then doctors will start deciding who is fit to be a parent. Trixie, of course, shuts them down and explains that doctors will use their professional judgement to help women in desperate straits and to stop them being labelled as criminals. Trixie recounts how she has seen women desperate to avoid the stigma of abortion so they have harmed themselves trying to abort their babies.

Following the debate Nancy is angered by the men who don’t understand what it’s like to have to make such a decision. She reveals to the Sisters that she had a baby in Cork when she was sixteen years old. She tells Sister Julienne that the nuns who dropped her off at Nonnatus sent the baby to an orphanage in London and when the opportunity came up to train at Nonnatus she was straight on the boat. Nancy admits that when she says she is visiting the nuns she visits her daughter who believes she is her sister. Due to unwed mothers not being able to be nurses in the 60s, Nancy begs Sister Julienne to use her discretion whilst she considers whether to keep Nancy on or not.