The Midwife: A Memoir Of Birth, Joy, And Hard Times Quotes
"Children were everywhere, and the streets were their playgrounds."
"It was undoubtedly a rough area. Knifings were common. Street fights were common."
"Early marriage was the norm. There was a high sense of sexual morality, even prudery, amongst the respectable people of the East End."
"Contraception, if practised at all, was unreliable."
"Washing, drying and ironing took up the biggest part of a woman’s working day."
"Life has changed irrevocably in the last fifty years."
"Nursing and midwifery were in a deplorable state. It was not considered a respectable occupation for any educated woman."
"Anything like eclampsia, haemorrhage, or mal-presentation, would mean the inevitable death of the mother."
"Why aren’t midwives the heroines of society that they should be?"
"I wouldn’t swap my job for anything on earth."
"Every spare minute of her time was spent practising."
"It's a very good thing for you that there is nothing wrong."
"You cannot understand what you have not experienced."
"Her cheerfulness alone would have lightened the atmosphere."
"He who loves knows it. He who loves not, knows it not."
"The fact that thousands of women and babies were dying annually for want of proper attention did not come into it."
"If we had not met, or if we had met and just passed each other by, all the great literature of the world, all the poets, all the great love stories would have been meaningless to me."
"Every difficulty in life was a challenge to her, and every one successfully overcome was an occasion for rejoicing."
"The stillness of the great heart of London was unforgettable."
"The children rushed higher in the house, screaming and pushing, hiding in cupboards, behind curtains, anywhere."
"By the time I got to the front door, all was quiet except: 'Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen - cummin’.'"
"Like most GPs of his generation he was a first-class midwife, with a knowledge and skill gained from the experience of his wide-ranging practice."
"He said, 'Thank you, nurse. I will come directly.'"
"I unravelled the pink and orange thing from my uniform, and went upstairs."
"Sister explained to me that she would not give Betty a sedative, because it might affect the baby."
"Dr Turner arrived, looking as though there was nothing in the world he would rather do on Christmas Day than attend a breech delivery."
"Much of a midwife’s work involves intense, often dramatic activity, but this is balanced by long periods of waiting quietly."
"Contrary to what one might think, it was a happy time."
"My most abiding Christmas memory was the carol singing on Christmas Eve."
"The baby was blue. Sister held her upside down by the ankles."
"The mother literally forgets the agony she has been through the moment she holds her baby."
"We don’t want you down with a cold. You can start your morning’s round at eleven o’clock."
"As they left, I heard her say, suspiciously: 'Who is that woman, anyway?'"
"His pale eyes seemed to lose all their color."
"Everyone was sleeping in Lady Chatterley, sprawled about all over the place."
"I could listen to her all day - the beautiful modulated voice, the moving hands, the hooded eyes."
"I hadn’t even the strength to crawl back up the beach to the car."
"I sighed. The responsibility was beginning to dawn on me."
"Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice said to the caterpillar."
"There, but for the grace of God, go I, and that solemn thought was truer than you might suppose."
"In the café we ordered steak and two eggs and chips and peas for her."
"She looked about six months’ pregnant, but if she had been half starved it might be a small baby."
"I shuddered. I had heard from Child Care Officers that if a mother takes another man into the house this can frequently be the death sentence for the children."
"I spent the whole of Sunday wandering around the docks. It was beautiful, with the great ships, and the water splashing, and the seagulls crying."
"She lived off this smile, and the others he condescended to give her, for months."
"We could not keep up with everyone in a lifetime."
"I thought one of the nuns must have written it, because I knew that Mary could read a little, but could barely write."
"Respectfully, I pulled the Raleigh out for her, fixed the black bag on the back, and watched the tyres sag as her large, heavy body clambered onto it."
"Once out on the road her mood seemed to lighten, and she turned to me with something that resembled a smile."
"She was unswervingly honest, and reacted to every person and every situation without guile or affectation."
"She was twenty when she volunteered to go behind enemy lines."
"Her good humour, and her rough badinage with all the patients, continued throughout the morning."
"She approached them all without a trace of sentimentality or condescension."
"The older Docklanders were accustomed to meeting middle-class do-gooders, who deigned to act graciously to inferiors."
"Her speech slipped from the middle-class pronunciation that she had acquired over the years into an approximation of the Cockney dialect."
"She shared the older people’s fear of hospitals, a fear which was widely expressed through scorn and derision."
"Her main problems were chronic malnutrition and her mental state."
"She was a lovely young redhead of about twenty-two. She was well named."
"He was not going to stay to watch the scene."
"She knew it would be the last time she would be allowed to sleep with her children."
"The day room was their dining room, where they sat at long benches to eat."
"A pig’s eyesight is poor, and, to a creature accustomed to the open countryside of Essex, the passage must have looked like the black hole into hell."
"Don't you fret, my luvvy. He'll never see it. Yer mum'll get rid of it for yer."
"If a living baby is born, it can't just be 'got rid of'."
"The baby has to be registered, and adoption papers have to be drawn up and signed by both parents to give consent."
"I must ring for the doctor. Anything could happen, and I need help."
"No one mus’ know - no doctors. I’ve got to get rid of it somehow."
"Now, leave this room at once. I have a baby to deliver, and I cannot do it with you present."
"I don’t want you to have a tear or a haemorrhage, so just do as I say."
"He’s the loveliest baby I have ever seen in my life, Doris. You can be proud of him."
"What am I goin’ to do? He’s the lovelies’ baby I ever seed."
"I imagine she had one happy afternoon with her baby, dozing, cuddling, kissing him, forging with him that unbreakable bond that is a mother’s love for her baby."
"A lonely widow will usually not find men crowding around anxious to give her love and companionship."
"There’s nothing you can do for me. My wife used to like this chocolate. I used to get it for ’er. She died last year. Thank you for asking, dear."
"Winnie was forty-four when her periods stopped. She thought it was the menopause."
"My wife is dying, and no one would have found out, but the foolish fellow had borrowed his father’s horse, and tied it to the hospital railings."
"All shall be well, and all will be well and all manner of things shall be well."
"This is all my fault, an’ I must apologise. I said the baby could go to hospital without consultin’ my wife."
"The baby survived. Either he is the ultimate survivor, or we put far too much emphasis on technology and techniques, I thought."
"God be with you, my dear. I will pray for Conchita Warren and her unborn baby."
"Thank God she had had the wisdom and the strength not to let the baby go."
"She was often selfish and inconsiderate. Flashes of brilliance and flashes of senility crossed and recrossed each other."
"Thank you, young man, that is very kind. But you need not trouble yourself. I am perfectly safe. The angels will take care of me."
"I decided that I wanted nothing more to do with her."
"Once in a while you are faced with a beauty and a joy that takes your soul, all unprepared, by assault."
"One cannot love these things. One can only love God, and through His grace come to love His people."
"I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him down the arches of the years."
"No one can give you faith. It is a gift from God alone."