'Call the Midwife' Recap: Season 14 Episode 4

Call the Midwife is available to stream for a limited time. Recap the previous and following episodes and other seasons.
Keep up with your favorite dramas and mysteries by signing up for our newsletter, Dramalogue.

Nonnatus House is gaining a new resident: Sister Catherine, a postulant who is not only preparing for her first vows but also her midwifery exams. She arrives a day earlier than expected, as various strikes threaten to derail different parts of British life.

Those strikes are keeping Jimmy Wrigley from his work at the dock, even as he has seven children to provide for. His eldest child, Gail, is pregnant with his first grandchild. His wife, Peggy, convinces Gail to move back in with the rest of the family until she gives birth because her blood pressure is high and her husband is in Cyprus with the Royal Air Force.

Peggy herself is pregnant, even though she’s 46. She hasn’t told anyone, and wants an abortion because she’s already run off her feet. The procedure is now legal, but requires the approval of multiple doctors. So Dr. Turner schedules an appointment at the hospital and suggests sterilization as well. Peggy agrees.

Peggy comes home bleeding while Nurse Crane is checking on Gail: she’s having a miscarriage. Dr. Turner sends her to the hospital for a procedure to make sure she has passed everything, and suggests that she could also be sterilized while there. Peggy has been forced to admit her pregnancy to Gail and her desire for an abortion. Gail doesn’t want to see her mother go through another miscarriage, and so supports her decision to be sterilized.

When Jimmy finally arrives at the hospital, having found a note at home after spending the day at the pub, Peggy has been in the operating room for hours. She dies from complications. Jimmy blames Gail for encouraging Peggy to undergo the sterilization procedure.

Sister Catherine was previously posted at a children’s hospital, so Nurse Crane brings her along to the Wrigleys to be with the children when she visits for Gail’s next check-up. Nurse Crane decides to move Gail to the maternity home so that she can rest until she gives birth, and Sister Catherine helps prepare dinner and stays with her siblings until a grateful Jimmy arrives home.

The Trottwoods also have to live with the results of a medical mishap. Andrew got measles as a young child and then developed a brain infection that leaves him confined to a wheelchair, nonverbal, and prone to seizures. His mother Jill loves and cares for him on her own, because her husband left them due to the strain of Andrew’s care. Jill has taken work as a catalog representative, a job she can do from home.

Shelagh sees the Trottwoods at the laundromat and dresses a wound Andrew incurs by slamming his hand in a washing machine door. Shelagh visits the Trottwoods at home later to check Andrew’s dressing, and gives him an antibiotic: he has been sucking on the bandage and caused an infection. She helps Jill bring Andrew in his wheelchair up the stairs to their apartment because the elevator is broken.

Andrew used to attend a special school in Essex despite a long bus ride, but the council stopped paying for him to attend – perhaps because of the distance. Jill gets worn down by minding Andrew all the time, and feels lonely since no one else understands what they go through. She also worries that Andrew doesn’t spend time with other children.

Sister Veronica goes to the council and fills out forms to try to restore funding for Andrew to go to school, but it’s a slow process. Violet also becomes involved and explains that part of the problem is that handicapped children have no legal right to education – although there’s currently a bill in Parliament to change that.

There is now a measles vaccine, but Dr. Turner is frustrated by lackluster appointments to get it. Miss Higgins prints posters and leaflets, and Jill sees one while out with Andrew one day. She decides to distribute leaflets, parking near a school with Andrew and telling passing families that they have a chance that she never had, to protect their children from measles.

Dr. Turner is thrilled with the number of people who sign up for vaccinations due to Jill’s efforts – but then the strikes delay the shipment of the vaccines so that they won’t arrive in time. Dr. Turner drives to fetch them himself while Sister Veronica distributes cookies to the impatiently waiting families until the vaccines arrive.

Shelagh brings Jill and Andrew to the clinic for the vaccination day to help out and see the fruit of their efforts. Andrew gets to spend time with other children, and Violet brings hopeful news to Jill: the council is working on getting Andrew back to his special school. Shelagh also gets Andrew involved in the scout troop run by Miss Higgins and Nurse Crane in the meantime.

Sister Catherine spends her sparse recreation time doing origami, having given up other activities that she loved when she became a nun. Sister Monica Joan interrupts her in her nonstop studying with a plate of cookies and asks her about her life before religious orders, and what all she misses.

Gail goes into labor at the maternity clinic and wishes she had her mother around to help her through it. Jimmy arrives to bring a box of knitted clothes for the baby that he found at home: Peggy had set them aside for Gail. He went to the pub for all seven of Peggy’s births, but now Nurse Crane asks him to attend his daughter’s as a familiar face, since she is still grieving the sudden loss of her mother.

Gail gives birth to a baby girl while her dad holds her hand. She decides to stay with him and her siblings until her husband returns from abroad.