No-one knows how many miscarriages the drug caused, but it's estimated that, in Germany alone, 10,000 babies were born affected by Thalidomide. Many were too damaged to survive for long. Today, fewer than 3,000 are still alive.

Did they use a real thalidomide baby in Call the Midwife?

Call the Midwife normally uses real newborn babies under 10-days-old (with pregnant mums being booked before they even go into labour) to film their birth scenes – lesions or wounds are added using the magic of CGI – but these births called for “a lot of moving prosthetics.”

What was the life expectancy of thalidomide babies?

Given a life expectancy of 19 years, Mandy was one of more than 10,000 babies worldwide born with a disability caused by the drug thalidomide. Thalidomide was prescribed during pregnancy to ease morning sickness before it was withdrawn in 1961 because it was causing birth defects.