Call The Midwife by Jennifer Worth

- A true story of the East End in the 1950s -

Jennifer is training to be a midwife by an order of nuns that worked in the slums since 1870s and she experiences poverty and the hard life lived by the people in the London docklands in the 50s but she also discovers something that goes beyond the surface. A sense of community where families are everything and the ability to enjoy life despite all their hardships.

This is not the kind of book I'd normally pick up and I am very glad that I did. Jennifer describes her work in a way that makes you feel as if you were her assistant during all those labours. There's the Spanish lady who's pregnant with her 25th child and all the other people that somehow have etched their way into Jennifer Worth's heart and memories.

It's sometimes difficult to envisage what it was like to live in the East End during the 50s as it was quite severely damaged by the bombs during the war and even though plenty have tried to describe it, it's just passed me by. Jennifer Worth has the ability to write and describe her life and experiences in a way that makes you embrace and cherish the insight she's given you, without ever going "over the top".

The book is brilliantly written and you can really feel the love Jennifer Worth had for her work, the people she worked with and the area that so many people shunned. I, as a non English person, found it very educational (again without noticing it) and I think it's a book to be appreciated by everyone, not to mention how much easier it is to give birth these days. Jennifer Worth describes a book she used during her studies where the women were advised to contact a doctor if the labour contractions 12 days...

I encourage everyone to read it, you really won't regret it.