How do they film the birth scenes in Call the Midwife? (2023)

Are the birth scenes real in Call the Midwife?

"Our midwifery adviser Terri Coates puts the actor through the birthing process following the structure of that week's story, whether the birth is at home or in hospital or in the back of a car.” Call the Midwife uses real newborns to play the babies in the show.

For the first series, the team asked midwives at a maternity unit if they knew any women who would be happy to bring babies to the set. By series two, regulations had tightened so all babies are now recruited through licensed agencies.

Yes — once the birth has been shot, real babies are swapped in for fake to film the moments after birth. The baby “supporting artists” playing newborns were provided by various extras agencies and were about three to four weeks old.

But the reality is that we need our newborns at very specific times due to the filming schedule, and so we get most of our babies through a specialist talent agency. We use babies up to about eight weeks old, and sometimes we have special demands, for example with regard to ethnicity.

"They are herbal cigarettes, not nicotine. They are disgusting, but they are not nicotine. We don't rehearse with them and when we come to film it's a dramatic slight of hand. It looks like I am smoking more than I really am."

We still have to pinch ourselves when we realise - even after ten years of filming - that this sleeping child is not actually a child at all. It is a prosthetic model of a baby - made with astonishing care and skill for our production!

In most cases your midwife will not get into the pool with you. If you're having a water birth at home, you may want your birth partner to join you in the water.

Despite the systems set in place, obviously, mistakes do happen. Newborn wrists and ankles can be tiny and the bands can slip off or be removed more easily than you may think, staff members may get lax and not follow proper protocol, or parents may be too exhausted to notice a change has occurred.

Call The Midwife was inspired by a true story.

Worth's memoirs inspired the series, and the character of Jenny Lee, played by Jessica Raine in the first three seasons and voiced by Vanessa Redgrave as the narrator through the rest, was based on the author herself.

Hospitals don't want the liability of pictures or a video recording. It's not that they don't want you to see the birth, you can watch it with your own eyes, after all. However, in the case of a birth injury, that video can be used as evidence.

How do they get babies to cry in movies?

Hall: What I do to get babies to cry is, I start to cry myself. For example, I'll go, "Wahhhh!" And the baby will start to cry. When a baby, even an infant, hears another baby cry, the infant or the baby will start to cry themselves. This is an example of empathy.

Some of you may be familiar with old movies or books that described or depicted the delivering physician as holding up the baby by its feet in mid air and spanking the baby's bottom (translation: bare butt) in order to get the baby to cry. This procedure is no longer done because it isn't necessary.

Saying just 'baby' or just 'mom' is using those words as names. Using 'the' in front of the other person is like using the third person for yourself. Without 'the' it's like you're using their first name as though it is 'Baby'.

The elderly midwife was sure that the child was stillborn or lifeless. She had placed it beneath the bed. When the doctor asked for the child, the midwife made a frightened gesture.

Nonnatus House, as it is portrayed in Call The Midwife, was not a real building. Jennifer Worth's time working with the Sisters of St John The Divine was spent at the London hospital in Whitechapel, before she moved on to Bloomsbury and Hampstead.

Though Worth's Call the Midwife is billed—along with its two sequels—as a memoir, there is not a little fiction in the book, and the show as well. Chummy, alas, appears not to have been real, according to nuns at the convent where Worth served.

The reason for the TV star leaving the show was due to conflicting schedules, and the actress admitted that she was unable to return to Call the Midwife due to other work commitments. Miranda tweeted at the time: "Having shared Chummy's return to CTM, I've not been able to birth (pun) the schedule to make it work."

The reason Trixie was written out part way through Series 7 and Series 11 was because both times, Helen George was pregnant at the time of filming; and her baby bump was becoming more and more difficult to hide as time went on.

Explanation: In the story "Birth" the blunder that midwife committed was that she dumped the baby among the soaked paper.

In 2021, Helen took a break from filming Call The Midwife due to her own real-life pregnancy. In the series, Trixie was seen travelling to Italy to care for her godmother. The star's pregnancy was not written into the show, so using some clever camera trickery and props, Helen was able to conceal her growing baby bump.

Why did they stop using birthing chairs?

Birthing chairs fell out of use after physicians began using the flat bed for women to lie on during delivery.

In fact, "labor pains are just as present in the water birth pools as they are anywhere else, but the environment is more relaxing and soothing therefore offering a more pleasurable experience," says David Ghozland, M.D., an OB-GYN practicing in Santa Monica, California.

Yes, you can still use Entonox – gas and air – while you're in the birthing pool. However, should you wish to have Pethidine or Meptid, you would need to stay out of the water for two hours after the injection.

How long is the baby in the water after the birth? Here in the US, practitioners usually bring the baby out of the water within the first ten seconds after birth. There is no physiological reason to leave the baby under the water for any length of time.

By law, a baby must be buried or cremated if he or she is stillborn at or after 24 weeks. Most, but not all hospitals offer to arrange a funeral . You don't need to make plans immediately, if you don't want to. Your baby's body will be kept safely until you have decided what arrangements you wish to make.

About 28,000 babies get switched in hospitals every year, temporarily or permanently, out of four million births, says Nicholas Webb, vice president of technology for Talon Medical Limited, a San Antonio, Texas-based vendor of a new high-tech ID bracelet for newborns.

Some hospitals take fingerprints, foot prints, or palm prints of newborns to prevent babies from being mixed up. Nurses also double check with the mother, checking the identity of that person as well, in order to prevent errors.

Jessica Raine starred as Nurse Jenny in series one to three, eventually leaving in 2014. According to reports, Jessica left the show in order to pursue film work in the United States.

Call the Midwife is based on a series of memoirs by Jennifer Worth, who worked as a nurse in the East End in the 1950s.

Call The Midwife 's Stephen McGann and screenwriter Heidi Thomas have been married for 30 years. Stephen's fan-favourite character, Doctor Patrick Turner, has been helping people since the first episode was broadcast in 2012.

Should you watch birth videos before giving birth?

Before giving birth to your baby, it can be helpful to watch videos to see what labor and birth are all about. Natural childbirth videos can help you know what to expect and help you choose the setting where you'd like to deliver.

There's no rule to say you must give birth flat on your back in a hospital bed. You can choose to move around and into different positions throughout your baby's birth. It's your prerogative. Birthing positions can help you to feel in control, reduce pain and open your pelvis to help the baby come out.

The procedure is common and included in average costs associated with delivery. For uninsured people, the cost of an epidural can range from about $1,000 to over $8,000.

Menthol tear sticks and menthol tear-producing sprays are products designed specifically to generate tears and are often used by film and TV actors. Simply apply them lightly under the eyes, and the residue will let off menthol vapors that make your eyes water.

The umbilical cord doesn't have nerves so your baby has no feeling in the cord. Your baby doesn't feel pain when the doctor cuts the cord. The cord doesn't hurt your baby as it dries, shrinks and falls off.

Doctors now know that newly born babies probably feel pain. But exactly how much they feel during labor and delivery is still debatable. "If you performed a medical procedure on a baby shortly after birth, she would certainly feel pain," says Christopher E.

The fetal ejection reflex, also known as the Ferguson reflex, is when the body “expels” a baby involuntarily — that is, without forced pushing on your part.

A baby doesn't drown during a water birth because the baby is already in water in the womb. It takes air for breath and when a baby comes from water into water without the introduction of air, the lungs remain collapsed and no water can enter.

Research shows that water does not enter the birth canal and travel upward during labor and there is not increased incidence of infections of the birth canal or uterus because of a waterbirth.

Why do midwives tell you not to push?

The most common reason for telling a women not to push is that her cervix is not fully dilated. Often when a baby is in an occipito posterior position the woman will feel the urge to push before the cervix is completely open.

No, the woman on the floor is the very NOT pregnant wife of the husband Janine was forced to have sex with. But her best gal pals don't want her to feel like she's missing out or that Janine might be superior for physically birthing the child, so they pretend she is due for labor any moment.

And as for those babies, Call the Midwife takes its youngest stars seriously. The show uses real newborns (up to around 8 weeks old) to play the babies that are birthed on the show. “We use about 60 to 70 [babies] a series,” said Tricklebank.

A stone's throw from the top of Canary Wharf's towers, Poplar is a historically poor East End district where regeneration projects continue to try to improve the quality of life.

Call the Midwife star Jenny Agutter has revealed the real-life connection to her character Sister Julienne. In a recent interview, the actress explained that Sister Julienne is based on a real nun called Sister Jocelyn and that she, by chance, was able to meet one of her relatives.

Poplar is a district in East London, England, the administrative centre of the borough of Tower Hamlets. Five miles (8 km) east of Charing Cross, it is part of the East End.

QUESTION The opening credits of TV's Call The Midwife show a street of terraced houses and a huge ocean liner. Is this a real picture? The photograph is genuine. It depicts Shaw Savill Line's Dominion Monarch at London's King George V Dock, dwarfing houses in Saville Road, Silvertown.

The show was inspired by a series of memoirs written by Jennifer Worth—Call the Midwife, Shadows of the Workhouse, and Farewell to the East End. Though many of the characters and situations, particularly in the early seasons, are borrowed from Worth's books, the show is nonetheless a work of fiction.

Nonnatus House, as it is portrayed in Call The Midwife, was not a real building. Jennifer Worth's time working with the Sisters of St John The Divine was spent at the London hospital in Whitechapel, before she moved on to Bloomsbury and Hampstead.

The real Sisters were the Religious Sisters of Saint John the Divine and were based at the St Frideswides Mission House on Lodore Street, which still exists. The Sisters of Saint John the Divine were established in 1848 in Fitzroy Square near Euston and were trained as nurses and midwives in Germany.

How medically accurate is Call the Midwife?

Ordinarily, TV shows and films tend to either exaggerate or underplay childbirth, but according to the experts, the BBC show gets it just right. In a video from PBS, four midwives commented on the drama's depiction of the profession and revealed that the show portrays the true experience of childbirth.

Though Worth's Call the Midwife is billed—along with its two sequels—as a memoir, there is not a little fiction in the book, and the show as well. Chummy, alas, appears not to have been real, according to nuns at the convent where Worth served.

The reason for the TV star leaving the show was due to conflicting schedules, and the actress admitted that she was unable to return to Call the Midwife due to other work commitments. Miranda tweeted at the time: "Having shared Chummy's return to CTM, I've not been able to birth (pun) the schedule to make it work."

Chummy was the only girl in the family and she and her six brothers were educated in England while their parents remained in British India.