Had you ever seen a birth

[LilyTheMink]

before giving birth yourself?

I think I'd only seen an animal do it but definitely no humans.

I really think its unnatural that it is so much behind closed doors and it is such an enormous shock to so many women.

I did nct and really the teacher skimmed over how the birth would feel. Contractions? "Like period pains" . Birth? Three theoretical 'stages' that in the actuality you can't understand from the experience at the time.

Aibu to think that we should be encouraging women to become more involved or even to view live births - somehow, even on video - before they are plunged into it with that first contraction of their own?

I remember whilst giving birth the midwife asking if I wanted to feel the babies head or want a mirror.......nope I did not!!
I would actually like to see a birth must be amazing (just not on my own body!)

@MrsFin

How old are you? I'm 60, DDs mid 20s and OBEM was around before I was pregnant.

That's extremely unlikely, given that OBEM only started in 2010...

We watched a video of a woman giving birth at school. The thing that most sticks in my mind was that when it was finished the teacher rewound it and we watched it in reverse - looked even worse that way and like the mother was sucking it back in!

@RAFHercules

I've watched cows calving. Giving birth to a baby was nowhere near as bad.

Me too, brought up on a dairy farm, decided against ever having children, the 'calving machine' mentally scarred me for life.

@RavenclawsRoar

We watched a video of a woman giving birth at school. The thing that most sticks in my mind was that when it was finished the teacher rewound it and we watched it in reverse - looked even worse that way and like the mother was sucking it back in!

That's classic

Yes, watched a very graphic video at school. We all did! Not even just once! One video in middle school, then two more in secondary!

@BadNomad

We watched a video of a birth in 1st year of high school in biology class. I just remember the baby had a wild hairy head and was purple. It was gross.

Me too. That would have been in 1973.

A friend gave birth two months after I did, I had a horrible experience so refused to tell friend as didn't want to scare her, a visual would have been much worse.

There was a 1990s version of OBEM that I used to watch on some obscure Sky channel, mainly American ladies giving birth.

I have given birth twice and I'm still none the wiser about all the stages of labour, it all seemed a bit the same to me, I learned nothing.

DSis is a paediatrician (who has given birth to her own DC in fairly traumatic circumstances).

She reckons there's far too much emphasis on "you have the right to have the birth you want" and not enough on "there's a fair chance it'll not go as planned, but luckily we have first class obstetricians on call to help you and your baby not die".

A lot of women are misled that birth will definitely be this primal, empowering experience, rather than looking at the statistics that show that many women require intervention (and the mortality rates before these interventions were possible were appalling).

That's not to say that hospitals/doctors always get it right, there are appalling incidences of failure that are incredibly tragic. Knowledge is power, and I think questioning why things are recommended is a good thing. A good doctor should be able to explain why they support a course of action in layman's terms, with stats to back it up.

However, I think that movements like "freebirthing" are irresponsible shite. The evidence shows it's not safe, and even one of the founders of the movement had a baby die because she refused medical intervention.

I'm in my 40s.

When I was a kid from 4 to about 10 you would randomly watch the TV in the day and there would be a woman giving birth. You could see and hear everything. The women were often in the nude. The births were all natural births.

I think they were OU programmes but I'm not sure.

I then watch OBEM and found it disappointing as it is very neat and tidy in comparison.

Yes. A video in year four at school and my friend at 16.

I saw them do an episiotomy without asking her consent they just snipped and carried on. It wasn't a nice experience but she barely remembers half of what happened. The nurses treated her badly because she was a teen mum on her second child with no father in the picture.

@MrsFin

How old are you? I'm 60, DDs mid 20s and OBEM was around before I was pregnant.

You must be thinking of a different programme.

OBEM isn't 20 years old.

We had to watch a video at High school, all the girls managed to watch it in full but one of the boys fainted. Quite a few of the other boys asked to leave the room as it was so horrible they felt sick

I didn't prior to giving birth myself. However my antenatal yoga classes were fantastic with preparing me for what to expect; there was a lot of emphasis on counting breaths, what positions would help etc.

Two years after my own birth I ended up as a birthing partner to one of my best friends. It was an amazing experience. She was induced and had had a very late miscarriage/ early still birth (23w+5d) before and was pretty terrified. But it ended up being quite a straightforward birth. I feel very privileged to have been part of it.

I watched obem.

I think the programme I recall from the 90s was 'A Baby Story'.

I went to an antenatal class with my son 12 years ago and they showed a video and explained everything using models

I also worked in a pet shop and often saw cats/rats/hamsters

DP was a dairy farmer and couldn't face being there for the birth of our twins. My mum came instead and to be fair she was probably much more helpful useful and supportive than he could have been. He's been a wonderful dad and life partner ever since. We're now grandparents btw.

Good god no, I would have been terrified. The videos are easily available to anyone who wants to watch though.

Yes have seen many baby's born as part of my job, but never a 'natural' birth if you will, never got to see a lovely water birth. All cs/ ecs/ instrumental delivery's, or attend when poor lady's can take no more and need an epidural.
Maybe me very aware of what I didn't want when I came to have my own dc and that was instrumental delivery.
Sometimes it's not good to be to informed, as you tend to know when things are going wrong or ask questions that a non medical person wouldn't even think about or know to care about

I think it's personal preference to how much people want to know and see before hand, plenty of video online if you did want to see what happens at the tail end of things

When I was pregnant with my first I "revised" heavily by binging one born every minute, and as many "birth vlogs/videos" as I could consume on youtube. I watched one born every minute with DH and often said "don't let them do that to me" "if you see me doing that, stop me" etc as there is a lot of giving birth on backs with intervention in OBEM.

With this pregnancy I've started listening to people's positive birth stories instead, but will undoubtedly watch more videos before birth too

I gave birth the night before our last antenatal class. The midwife wheeled us both down to the class. On the way, in the lift, she quietly said, "don't tell them the truth about what it's like".

I'm a doctor, and I work in obstetric anaesthetics so yeah, quite a few! I think we watched a video at school at least once. Then I saw some during my obs & gynae placement in uni, and did some more on elective in Swaziland (now eSwatini). Obs & gynae as an F1, delivered one myself in A&E as an F2, then huge amounts if labour ward time as an anaesthetic trainee - I'd probably seen more than 200 deliveries by the time I had DS1, though admittedly a disproportionate number of instrumentals/CS due to the nature of my work. So I had a very good idea of what to expect, perhaps slightly biased towards anticipating more drama than I actually had in the end!

It's still amazing and I get a little emotional every time, but I particularly remember a couple I saw as a student which were just a privilege to be part of. On my most recent labour ward stint one of the most powerful experiences was actually accidentally being in the room for a spontaneous delivery with no anaesthetic input from me (well, I'd just gone in to put in a new cannula when she started pushing, but that doesn't really count). I think I need to see ones like that occasionally!