Here we are in April 1968 at the beginning of another new season of Call the Midwife. Like many of you who have also been watching the series since the beginning, I excitedly anticipate every new season. I recently read that the show’s creator and writer, Heidi Thomas said, in reference to the new season, "The stories we tell are like babies — they never stop coming, we love them all, and we vow to do our best by every single one." A woman after my own heart; I love that analogy! Hopefully this season we will see the wedding episode to top all wedding episodes featuring Trixie (Helen George) and Matthew (Olly Rix). Given Trixie’s flair for fashion and glamour, my guess is that it will be a wedding at which we will all want to be guests.

Straightaway we meet a new character, Sister Veronica (played by Rebecca Gethings) who has joined Nonnatus House. I am curious to follow how she fits in – as the first episode foreshadows challenges. After all, a nun with a penchant for fibbing is a little unorthodox – Sister Julienne's (Jenny Agutter) patience does have limits! Sister Veronica comes to Nonnatus not as a midwife, though she has worked as one, but as a community “health visitor” which are nurses who specialize in public health. Even today families in the UK have a health visitor assigned to them either during pregnancy or after giving birth. The health visitor connects the dots for families between the social, educational, and health services they need – ingenious – US take note.

Diving into this first episode of the season, as is customary for the show, the writers don’t shy away from difficult topics. One of my favorite storylines from the episode revolves around Lucille (Leonie Elliott) struggling with depression. As they say “when it rains it pours”, and life is currently a hurricane for Lucille. She and husband Cyril (Zephryn Taitte) have been trying to conceive quite unsuccessfully, after a devastating miscarriage, and working with pregnant and birthing women every day as a midwife is a constant reminder of that pain. Add to that the politician Enoch Powell riling up Britain’s citizens against immigrants. You will recall that Lucille is from Jamaica, representative of many nurses who immigrated from the Caribbean to the UK in the 1960’s. Enoch Powell was a controversial politician who was very critical of UK policies on immigration. In the face of rising public discontent around immigration, Lucille profoundly and personally feels the weight of now being an unwelcome stranger in the country she has thought of as home. This culminates in her agonizingly having to leave a laboring Mrs. Piccard mid-labor as the patient spews hate speech about immigrants between contractions, looking Lucille in the eye saying, “I’m not talking about you Nurse Robinson”.

I would not be honest if I didn’t admit that there have been a few times in my career (either as a nurse or a midwife) when I had wished I were anywhere but where I was providing care in that moment, for any number of reasons. That said, the thought of stepping away has never occurred to me. All that to emphasize the pain that Lucille must be deeply experiencing to lead her to that action – because I am sure that Lucille has far more empathy and compassion than I!

What I have always loved about the series is the parallels it draws between the show’s time period and current day. As US immigration issues have been front and center the past few months, and discussions around resource allocation abound, Mr. Piccard’s comment on charity vs entitlement (in response to Midwife Veronica’s news that she will be signing the couple’s children up for free meals at school) is particularly pointed. “Getting what other people get – that’s entitlement; getting it free is charity, and we aren’t poor”.

Listen, I am not a political analyst, nor do I pretend to be. I am keenly aware that immigration is a supremely complicated issue. As a nurse-midwife I am just grateful that at my very core it’s not for me to be concerned about where someone is from or the status of their citizenship – what I am called to do is to care about patients as fellow human beings, and deliver care that is compassionate, humanistic, and equal to that which I would expect for my own loved ones to receive. Hopefully we won’t see Lucille’s burdens become so heavy that she has to step away – Nonnatus House and the women of Poplar need her!