Book Review: Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth

Bottom Line: If you like your memoirs jampacked with graphic details of the physical act of giving birth, then this memoir is just for you.

It doesn't take the reader long to figure out that Ms. Worth is going to treat us to an immersive experience of her years as a midwife in the East End of London in the late 1950s and the 1960s. But, that's not necessarily a bad thing. She doesn't throw details around just to shock or gross us out. The anecdotes are all in purpose of demonstrating a few important key idea.

First, midwives and birthing professionals are important to women and their babies. In the case of some of these East End women, living in condemned buildings but having no other place to go, the midwives were their main and only access to pre and post natal assistance. And some of these women had a baby almost every year. Diseases were spotted and treated, abuse reported, and lives saved because of the work of these midwives. I think the opening chapter serves to show the difficulty of birthing a baby. The chapters on handling breech birth and premature babies reinforce the fact that without the midwives' assistance, both mother and baby might have died.

Second, life is hard, and bringing new life into the world is a very difficult part of it. Worth recounts the conditions under which many of these women and their young children live: poverty, abuse, decrepit and uncared for building that sometimes don't even keep out the rain. She recounts how for many of the women she visits, the only water is cold water piped into the kitchen. If there is a toilet in the apartment, it is also in the kitchen because that's where the pipes are. In America, the 50s and 60s are seen as kind of a Golden Age--think of the glamor of a TV show like Mad Men. In contrast, the East End of London was a place of brothels and bombed-out properties. Many of the large buildings were condemned and therefore not kept up with regular city services, such as garbage removal. They are written off, but at the same time, fully occupied because there was just no place else for the people to go. They couldn't afford the other parts of London.

Spoiler / warning: There is a chapter near the middle of the book where Worth recounts the story of Kate, a young Irish woman who finds herself trapped in prostitution. Worth tells in graphic sexual terms what Kate witnesses at the brothel. It is a small part of the book, but could be disturbing to younger female readers and titillating to male readers.

I liked the book and am glad to have read it, especially now that one of my friends is a Doula. I feel like I understand more about the process of prenatal care, labor, birth, and postnatal needs.