Line #8 TearJerker/CallTheMidwife


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5	* The second episode introduces a woman who, due to rickets as a child, has problems with her pelvis and has lost four babies. She breaks down during her clinic visit as she tells Chummy that she felt the baby move, just like she did the other four.
6	* Mary having her baby taken away.
7	* Jenny bonding with Joe, who is later evicted from his tenement flat and, with the lack of attention from the district nurses in the hospital, ends up having to have both legs amputated below the knee, and dies soon after.
8	* The scenes of the third Christmas special with Old!Jenny in 2005. It's clear from her melancholy reaction over old photographs that many of her Poplar friends are long gone, and it's also revealed that she's who Cynthia gave the lamb figurine to.
9	* The death of Sister Evangelina and everyone's reactions, especially Sister Monica Joan's.
10	* The season four episode with the woman who gives birth to undiagnosed twins, the first of which is stillborn. Not only is the mother's grief gut-wrenching, but the two young midwives attending - Barbara and Patsy - are also devastated but have to put on a brave face and be supportive as best they can. Patsy has to bring the dead baby out to the expectant father and tell him what happened, as well as take charge of the situation since she is more senior than Barbara (who only just began working the previous episode). Phyllis is called to the scene and arrives to find Barbara crying in the kitchen as she's boiling water for the second baby's delivery, and Phyllis' first action is to say "You poor girl" and give Barbara a hug, letting her cry on her shoulder.
11	* The baby that dies shortly after birth in a 2x02, and the effect it has on Cynthia, the midwife who delivered the baby.
12	* Nora Harding's case is already discussed on the Series page in terms of her increasingly desperate attempts to terminate her ninth pregnancy, but another heartbreaking element of the story is how apologetic she and her husband are for ''having sex with each other''. Bill actually ''apologizes'' to Nora when he sees how distraught she is about the pregnancy, and her gentle response that "he never had to force her" makes it clear that he's apologizing for continuing to be intimate with her when they don't want and can't handle any more children. Likewise, Nora later comments rather apologetically to Nurse Lee that she and Bill had abstained in the past, but tended to "pay for it in other ways" (i.e. the lack of intimacy strained their relationship). The only person in the episode who even comes close to SlutShaming Nora is the herbalist Mrs. Pritchard - who in fairness is being verbally and then physically attacked by Nora at the time. However, both Nora and Bill have clearly internalized that they're doing something wrong or irresponsible by wanting to continue to have a sex life ''with their own spouse'', in an era when abstinence was the only truly reliable birth control.
13	* The death of Alec in season three. Especially since everything seemed to be alright, only for him to develop an embolism and die just an hour after Jenny left his bedside.
14	* Pamela Saint suffering postpartum psychosis in 3x07. Not only does the poor woman have to be sent to an asylum and receive shock therapy, but her husband can barely cope without her enough to take care of his baby daughter. Fortunately, Pamela later improves and the family is reunited.
15	* Chummy's distant mother, Lady Browne, is slowly and painfully dying of cancer while at the same time trying to keep her dignity. After trying to help her mother over and over, Chummy finally realizes with help from her friends that the best she can do for her mother is make Lady Browne comfortable at Chummy's home until she passes. She and the others keep watch at her mother's bedside as Chummy does her best to connect with her dying mother and fulfill her requests, even giving her a manicure. As the time draws near, Chummy spills tea on her nursing uniform and is reluctant to change out of it; however, Sister Monica Joan and Jenny tell Chummy it's okay to stop being a nurse and start being a daughter again. Borrowing her mother's robe, Chummy lies down beside Lady Browne and tells her mother she loves her as Lady Browne breathes her last.
16	** Sister Monica Joan's story from the same episode is just as heart-wrenching. She and Chummy have a conversation about grief, which prompts Chummy to ask how long ago Sister Monica Joan's mother died. She deflects the question, clearly uncomfortable. Later, Fred finds Sister Monica Joan wandering up a commercial road, missing her wimple and collar, and unable to recognize him or Sister Julienne. She sobs in distress over being brought home by a strange man and relays to Sister Julienne that she was once evaluated for what's implied to be mental infirmity, and that her mother calls her "stupid" and "too tall." When she is calm and has regained her memory, she tells Cynthia that her relationship with her mother was "never affectionate" and her decision to become a nun made it worse. Despite this, she misses her mother and is depressed upon being reminded that she is dead.
17	* During season five, babies in the neighborhood keep being born with missing limbs and severe birth defects, and no one can figure out why. Dealing with the horrific circumstances are hard enough, particularly in the case of one baby that is born so deformed it dies soon after birth and its gender can't even be determined without autopsy. At last, Dr. Turner receives a notice that Distival [[note]]The name that thalidomide was released under in the UK[[/note]], a medication he had prescribed to several patients to help them with morning sickness, is being withdrawn from the market and may be the cause. He then has the devastating task of going back to the affected families and telling them the drug he gave them that was supposed to help them may have also hurt their babies, or that the children they haven't had yet may be affected by it.
18	* The season four episode with the baby suffering from brittle bone disease. Not only does it feature a poor infant who gets no less than three broken bones over the course of the episode, he is also taken from his parents because initially they are believed to be the ones responsible (technically they are, but not because of abuse of any kind, but because their baby's bones are so brittle that even a gentle touch can cause them to break).
19	* The case where one mother has so taken to Sister Evangelina's insistence that breast milk is best for babies that she resists giving her baby formula even though she has inverted nipples and is not able to nurse properly. Sister Evangelina is [[MyGodwhatHaveIDone so horrified]] that the mother took her advice so strongly that she leaves temporarily to go to a convent where all the nuns stay silent.
20	* The episode where Sister Evangelina inadvertently mixes up two babies, giving them to the wrong mothers. One then turns out to have a heart murmur and need a lot of extra care. It's heartbreaking to watch the parents involved suffer, but almost more so to see the normally stoic Sister Evangelina break down to such a degree.
21	* One episode has a couple arguing over the husband's inability to find work and provide for the family, with his eight months pregnant wife growing increasingly frustrated that he seems to just sit around half the day rather than go out and get work. Eventually she gets so fed-up and worried about how to make ends meet that she throws him out. It then turns out he has leukemia, and only days - weeks at best - to live. Besides dealing with the guilt over having thrown him out, and having to realize and accept that her husband is about to die, she stresses over the birth of her baby. Not out of fear of childbirth, but because she wants her husband to see his child before he dies, and so she asks Barbara to help induce her labor as soon as possible.
22	* During the course of the fourth season, it becomes more and more obvious that Trixie has a drinking problem. After she calls off her engagement to Tom, things only get worse. In the last episode of the season, she sits alone at night and calls the Samaritans in tears, feeling she has nobody else to turn to. Sister Mary Cynthia overhears, comes over and ends the call (after telling the person on the other end that Trixie is now somewhere safe and not alone), and assures Trixie that she's not alone.
23	* ''Everything'' involving Barbara's death. Septicemia is an awful way to die, and she previously had a HopeSpot that she might survive, although she would have to give up being a midwife due to nerve damage, and then rapidly deteriorated. All of the cast's reaction is devastating, but the worst are Tom (her husband) and Phyllis (her best friend). A special mention also goes to the toy carousel that Reggie places upon her grave.
24	** In the 2021 Christmas special, Phyllis bursts into tears upon seeing Lucille's wedding dress hanging in the same place as Barbara's once did.
25	* The Lunt family's case in 7x03 is a particularly tragic one. They seem even worse off financially than many other impoverished patients in the area, with the entire family living in a single run-down room that Gordon still says used to be Doreen's "pride and joy". Doreen and their daughter are both diagnosed with the incurable, degenerative condition of Huntington's Chorea, and Doreen visibly declines over the course of the episode to the point where she's unable to care for her infant child. Gordon, terrified of his family getting broken up and trying desperately to keep his home functioning, eventually sees his family separated anyway, with his elder daughter needing to enter residential care and his infant needing to go into foster care.
26	** That's also just ''in'' the episode. Since Doreen's disease is both genetic and degenerative, she will very likely need to go into care herself at some point (she seemed to be barely functioning by the end of the episode), and the Lunts' seemingly-healthy son and infant may well show signs of the disease later.
27	* May's backstory in season eight. Her birth mother was a refugee who turned to prostitution to survive and wound up with May as a result. She kept trying to make a better life for herself and May by getting a job, but was ultimately too unreliable to do so, resulting in May being taken from her permanently. It was also implied there was [[DomesticAbuse physical abuse]], as both May and her birth mother would often come back to the orphanage with bruises and cigarette burns.
28	** Even after coming to England, May's hardships aren't over. The family that was originally set to adopt her had to delay the process because the father became sick with tuberculosis and the mother didn't feel that she could manage without him, prompting the Turners to take her in as a foster child. She later becomes such a part of the family that everyone is heartbroken when it is time to give her up. It is a heartwarming moment indeed when she is able to stay for good.
29	* It ends on a heartwarming note, but a white couple in 1x03. The woman's first husband abandoned her and their children, and she married another man due to wanting a better life for her children rather than love for him. Eventually, she came to genuinely love him, but this didn't stop her from having a one-night stand with a black man. [[ChocolateBaby The baby was born black]], and she clearly expected her husband to turn her and her son out. After a whole episode of being over-the-moon about his upcoming child's birth and completely ecstatic upon hearing the baby is a boy, the realisation of what happened is clear on his face when he sees his wife holding the baby. Yet, despite the fact he'd have every right to divorce his wife for adultery and give her no help with the child that visually isn't biologically his, he's almost immediately doting on his son, and the last scene with him has him, in the same quasi-overprotectiveness he showed when his wife was pregnant, bringing the baby to the hospital due to the baby having what was likely just a mild cough, and as they're waiting to be seen, he gently holds his boy's tiny hand.
30	* Bernard, a homeless man who's drinking methylated spirits (industrial alcohol with additives that make it poisonous) is tragic in how much he no longer seems to ''care'' about how bad a shape he's in, notably barely reacting to Nancy accidentally ''pulling his foot off while trying to remove his shoe'' except to say that it doesn't even hurt, while Nancy, Dr. Turner, and Fred look on in horror.
31	* Episode 5 of series 11 has a side-plot where Lucille is working out where her career will go after finding out she's pregnant in the previous episode, as being a midwife working unpredictable shifts and a mother to a newborn is next to impossible. But nearer the end of the episode, while delivering a woman's third child in the maternity home, Lucille suffers from a miscarriage. She manages to put on a brave face for the mother in labour, but once the delivery is over, she can't help but cry at the sight of the newborn baby girl, and has to call Phyllis for help, as she had been ordered to. But then, later on, the miscarriage worsens, and Lucille hides herself in the bathroom. Phyllis respects Lucille's privacy, keeping the door between them, but as Lucille explains she's suffering a miscarriage, Phyllis can't help but break down in tears while helping her.
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Context TearJerker / CallTheMidwife