Ok, so which MNer gave birth in my campsite this morning? I have some questions....

[TorchlightMcKenzie]

like, how did you fill the birth pool?
How did you keep hot?
How did you empty it?
Did you also deliver the placenta in the bell tent?

And many MANY more!

And, can I meet you? Am also in bell tent with 7 week old!

thats bonkers that is, and not just a bit bonkers but A LOT bonkers

Hang on, wasn't the OP there? And reported that some people were upset and complained?

My Uncle's performing at the festival and is camping in the next field over. The impression I get from him is that everyone's wandering around all warm and fuzzy because of it, but maybe that's just the people he's hanging around with

I don't think they're wandering around warm and fuzzy after this more like wacky backy because they're tired.

I think most people that didn't hear it and tend to shower after 10 or not at all are happy and maybe like me even WISH they'd heard it

There were a few tents with kids that camped near the showers that were not so happy.

Bonnie has had a few concert songs dedicated to her!

Ooh, who's your Uncle?

Fwiw, some of you know NOTHING about folk festivals!!!!! Lol

Funny I was just looking at soulpad on fb (because my fecking tent leaks..another story) and there was a pic of someone in a bell tent having recently given birth. It must be the same ones. What a small world. Hope their's doesn't leak like ours does.

Shagmund, please stop wth the generalising and calling us all uptight nobbers. We're not.

I'm not, anyway.

I sent my own child away to my mother's house during my home birth, as soon as she could get him, because while I was able to laugh through the first few contractions, by the half an hour point, I was struggling and I didn't want him to witness me being in so much pain, or hear the noise I was making.

I think that's fair; I'm having another home birth and if there were children living in the surrounding flats I would probably not do it. I don't want anyone to have to hear me shout and scream, let alone small people whom it ight disturb - I don't want to wake them, among other concerns.

how is that not a normal response - how am I being uptight or a spoilsport or whatever you called everyone? I'm just being considerate. I wouldn't like my kids woken by someone in labour, it's not that much fun to listen to and they are entitled to sleep.

In fact I'm only having a home birth because my labours are v quick and the hospital is many miles away, so I probably won't make it - this is on the advice of the MW. If I could be sure of getting there I'd take my noise and my shouting, and do it somewhere that people expect to be awake.

Calm down Shagmund - you sound a bit defensive!

I am (almost) as yogurt-weaving and hemp-wearing as they come.

I can't think, off-hand, of anything nicer than a merry birth in a field or somesuch.

but the point is that her desire for the kind of birth she wanted doesn't trump everyone else's sensibilities.

It's just...not terribly good manners. And rather presumptive, to be honest.

Feel at the idea that hearing a woman in normal childbirth is intrinsically harmful for children and that we have an obligation to shield them from it.

Shagmund we don't have an obligation to shield them from it. It's personal choice whether we do or not.

Some people are offended by it, some would relish being there and overhearing it, some are non plussed...everyone is entitled to feel the way they do about it.

Really? Well I suppose it is a bit sad, but no more sad than the fact we shield them from someone screaming for any other reason - you know, if you broke your ankle or had really bad toothache, or something - would you want people to be woken by that?

I'm just being pragmatic and thinking about what people might and might not want to sacrifice for someone else's planned perfect birth.

I certainly would not have wanted an audience for my own pain when I gave birth. I didn't cope with it very well, I screamed and shouted and it was horrible.

Not all births, or noise/things associated with birth, are beautiful and magical. It's nature and it's fairly brutal at times.

a bit like dying, I would not want a child to witness that either.

Any new, strange, emotional experience can be either harmful, or if not harmful - troubling, unsettling, difficult to process.

A woman in labour may sound like she is in tremendous pain...er, because she is, I rather assume! How can a child process that it is all part of the cycle of life? What about children who don't yet know about reproduction and childbirth?

It's not just children either. I haven't had children, and I have never heard a woman in labour. I like to think I would find it extraordinarily moving and joyful, but I suspect I would find it frightening, too.

Bad manners.

Ok.

Still think there's some jealous, cheese paring, cats bum mouthed, Daily Mail reading, judgey-panted, mean spirited, arse-holery going on on this thread.

Thanks Shagmund...how decent of you. I'm trying to explain - obviously you will judge my entire character, regardless.

and I fucking hate the daily mail. Please stop it.

Shag - jealous? That's pretty unkind.

Not only am I not a DM reader, but I am anything but jealous Shagmund, enough with the . For me it's more about missing out on a good night's sleep and hot shower, rather than shielding my children from the wonders of nature. Sorry to be so mundane!

jealous, cheese paring, cats bum mouthed, Daily Mail reading, judgey-panted, mean spirited, arse-holery going on on this thread
Sorry Shagmund, but if I choose to attend a chilled out folk festival and have some crazed hippy inflicting her right on-ness on an uninformed/uninvited audience full of small children, who could be either kept awake or scared, I have the right to be pissed off and annoyed.
I don't see what reading the Daily Mail has to do with it.
And as for 'judgey panted' (what a ridiculous expression) - yeh, and?

When I gave birth at home to DD it was a very hot night, and we had all the windows open.

I was to find out the next day the neighbours had heard. Some things, like having sex and giving birth are private IMO. Maybe that's why I didn't like giving birth in hospital, but sometimes needs must.....

If it had all been rather spontaneous and she'd just happened to pop whilst at the festival then that would be lovely. However, if the paper report is to be believed that it seems that she and her dp, a doula, a midwife and their birthing paraphanaelia have been driving round attending festivals would seem to be more than a little bit attention seeking and strange.

I'm going camping in a few weeks so if anyone is planning to give birth near me can they keep it down.

The couple pledged their vows in a ?hand-fasting? ceremony at the Chalice Well in Glastonbury on the eve of the midsummer solstice in June

Galadriel?s daughter Jazz, who is 18, was able to travel up from our home

Galadriel?s doula (pregnancy and birth supporter)

Viz couldn't have written this any better for the comic strip Modern Parents.

Wonder what Galadriel's real name is.

albertexactly - if it had been unplanned and say, she had popped earlier than expected, then awww.....sweet.
She sounds really odd, and it must have cost a fortune.
A timely reminder of why I no longer go to festivals.

hahah yeh Malcolm and Cressida...lol
so self centred.

i don't have a problem with the idea - i think the organisation is quite impressive!

whether it is considerate or not - if you know you are a noisy one, i would think not.

and if no-one else could have a shower (not clear really, there may have been enough water to go around) then that would have been inconsiderate.

that said, i have taken small children camping and had a then six-monther yell non-stop for an hour at 3am.

he was right next to me being cuddled so it wasn't for want of trying to calm him.....

People around the site were very nice about it, but they all heard.

It isn't really that it happened in a campsite, but that she chose for it to be in a campsite. Nobody would be complaining if she had gone into labour early and couldn't have avoided it. But it was a planned birth - she went out of her way to have this baby in a tent.

The screaming could well have panicked a young child. The screaming probably did keep many campers awake. This might have been the only holiday some of these people get, and it ended up centred around this one woman and her unnecessary, inconsiderate birth plans.