Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times (The Midwife Trilogy #1)

by Jennifer Worth

You never see a policeman alone. Yet we nurses and midwives are always alone, on foot or bicycle. We would never be touched. So deep is the respect, even reverence, of the roughest, toughest docker for the district midwives that we can go anywhere alone, day or night, without fear.

Only the kind Sisters would send a cup of tea up to a nurse who had been working all night.

Old friendships are always the best, and childhood

friends are very special. You grow up together, and know the best and the worst of each other.

“I’ll be glad when we gets this baby out. She’s getting tired. I won’t go to work no more, the lads can do the job. I’ll stop here, and look after Con and the kids.” This he did, to my amazement. In those days no self-respecting East Ender would demean himself by doing what he would call “womens’ work”.

The knowledge that Sister Julienne would be praying for us had an extraordinary effect. All the tension and anxiety left me, and I felt calm and confident. I had learned to respect the power of prayer.