When it was time to film Santana’s scene, real-life mum Natalie watched proceedings on a monitor. The baby murmured only briefly, when she was first carried into the bright light of the set, but settled within moments. Helen George, who plays Trixie, handed her to the actress playing her mother, who cradled her lovingly, and after Philippa called ‘Cut!’ there was the usual sound of all the male technicians clearing their throats and blowing their noses.
‘It was weird to see her handed to someone else,’ admits Natalie. ‘But it’s lovely just looking at her. It would have been fantastic to have done the same with all the other children,’ she says. Like every mother who has taken part in the show, she will keep a recording of Santana’s TV debut for the young star to see when she is older.
While Terri’s first concern on set is always for the wellbeing of the baby, her presence is vital to the adult actors too. Some weeks before a birthing scene is filmed, the script is rehearsed in detail. Terri uses a wonderful old shabby-chic doll, which she has had throughout her career, to demonstrate the delivery moves to the actors. This is especially important when the birth is complicated. She is also careful to point out how the mother’s modesty would have been preserved, and to explain key clinical phrases so that the nuns, midwives and doctors can say them with an air of confidence. She also provides crucial guidance to the actresses playing the labouring mothers. In the fifties, girls married and gave birth young, and this is reflected in the age of our performers. Very few have given birth in real life and they rely on Terri to ensure that their on-screen labour is as life-like as possible.
Terri believes that too many on-screen births are melodramatic and overly vocal. ‘A lot of women are centred and calm in labour, not at all like you see in soap operas. They are focused and often very wrapped up in themselves,’ she explains. In the opinion of Pam Ferris, this approach is key to the success of the birth scenes in Call the Midwife. ‘We’ve had fabulous actresses doing the birthing, making really believable noises. The emotional temperature in the room is really high when we’re doing those sequences,’ says Pam. ‘It’s very, very powerful stuff. You don’t get much more fundamental than that really. The anxiety and the joy combined make them very, very highly charged moments for everybody. Although we’re sometimes only giving birth to a little bit of plastic, you still get excited.’
These ‘little bits of plastic’ are actually prosthetic babies, which appear in almost every episode. They take the place of real babies in the more technically complex delivery shots.
The detailed small figures have the dimensions of a six-and-a-half-pound infant, but weigh rather more, and have a wipe-clean silicone skin that can be dressed with oils, gels and creams.
In Episode One, Jenny is given her first case to handle alone: Conchita Warren – played by Carolina Validés – who is pregnant with her 25th child.
Terri Coates, Consultant Midwife, on set tending to a newborn.
(© We Are Laura)
(© We Are Laura)
Amy Roberts, Costume Designer, has a range of pregnancy padding to hand, which actors delight in trying on.
Top right: Terri Coates, Consultant Midwife, demonstrating delivery moves. Below: Helen George (Trixie) at the maternity clinic.
(Top left © Popperfoto/Getty/Courtesy of Tower Hamlets Archive)
(Top right © We Are Laura)
(© We Are Laura)
Christine Walmesley-Cotham, Hair and Make-up Designer, with one of the life-like prosthetic babies.
(Left © Tower Hamlets Archives)
(Right © We Are Laura)
THE MEDICAL BAG
BEING A FIFTIES’ MIDWIFE REQUIRED COMPASSION, MEDICAL KNOW-HOW AND MUSCLE-POWER. THE BROWN LEATHER CASE TAKEN TO EVERY DELIVERY BY THE MIDWIVES WEIGHED AT LEAST AS MUCH AS A LUSTY NEWBORN. SO WHAT WAS INSIDE WEIGHING IT DOWN?
(© We Are Laura)
FIGURE 1 – OPEN MIDWIFE’S MEDICAL BAG I. There was a length of rubber tubing with which to give an enema. At the time the midwives and nuns were switching from old-style and easily smashed glass to rubber. Back then every woman in labour was given an enema but they are no longer deemed necessary during childbirth. — II. Dettol was a well-known antiseptic. Today its function has largely been replaced by plain water after fears that strong antiseptics kill good bacteria as well as bad. — III. There was a nursery thermometer for testing bath water – now mostly usurped by an elbow or a wrist – as well as one to register body temperature. — IV. The urine in a test tube held by clamps was warmed to see if there was any evidence of protein. If the heated urine produced a frothy substance resembling cooked egg white then it indicated a possible infection or even the threat of pre-eclampsia, a condition that can be fatal to mums and babies. Nowadays strips are used to carry out the same test. A spirit lamp – a bottle with a wick running through it – was lit for urine testing, which explains why midwives carried a box of matches with them.
(© We Are Laura)
FIGURE 2 – CONTENTS OF A MIDWIFE’S MEDICAL BAG I. Carbolic soap helped the shaving process, and was also used for handwashing. — II. Tweezers were used to remove dirty dressings, which were duly dropped into an enamel bowl. — III. Enamel bowls were carried to hold solutions or waste items. — IV. The horn-shaped Pinard, a foetal heart monitor, has been standard equipment for decades. — V. A vicious-looking stainless steel razor was used to prepare women for delivery. — VI. Scissors used to cut the umbilical cord are shaped like a parrot’s beak. — VII. Midwives carried a sphygmomanometer or blood pressure measuring device with a fabric cuff and the dial encased in leather. — VIII. This hypochlorite solution was used as