Anyone else watching the Positive Birth Company birth live stream?

[MrsD2021]

Siobhan Miller (founder of the Positive Birth Company) is live streaming her birth. It went live around an hour ago. Thought we could use this thread as a live reaction/discussion thread if that’s allowed.

Just saw on Instagram there were no midwives available to come out to her - gutted for her, I’d be so upset 😢

If it’s her 4th it’ll all be over in no time anyway!

Where is she based?

Ah that's disappointing but glad there wasn't anything wrong

Ah I’m so disappointed for her, and selfishly for myself because I was weirdly looking forward to it in a strange kinda way 😂

I was interested to watch too

So she left her house at approx 9:15pm and the midwives would’ve been able to get to her at 10pm. She must’ve felt pretty close to pushing if she couldn’t wait for 45 minutes. I really hope that car journey doesn’t take long…she’d be gutted if she ended up giving birth in the car!

I just had a look at the PBC, didn’t bother with anything like that for my first but due to give birth again in March. Saw all the ‘birthing person’ stuff and thought 😷 not for me. I’m also a bit 😳 At all the photos of small children watching their mums give birth, in one case a girl of about 4 shining a torch onto her mum’s vagina. Downright inappropriate, it seems to be fashionable to treat children as small adults when they’re not.

ANYHOW hopefully she had an uneventful transfer and is now cuddling a baby.

At 4 I’d think some kids are mature enough to watch a birth, what a positive thing for them to have seen, for their own births.
We happily let kids watch animals give birth so why not humans?

Because watching their own mum haemorrhage or have a shoulder dystopia will be significantly more traumatising than watching it happen to a goat?

Whats wrong with a child watching their mother give birth?

Its normal. Its natural.

Why do we as a culture try and make normal things taboo? Childbirth and death are the two necessities of life and yet so many people try and Shield children from them and pretend they dont exist, as if knowing all about them will somehow corrupt their childish innocence.

Because unless it goes swimmingly to plan, it could be very traumatic for the child - blood loss, screaming, seeing their mum in agonising pain, babies born not breathing. I don’t believe it’s ever ‘for the good of the child’ it’s usually just the mum enforcing her Earth-mother ideals upon her small kids. There are plenty of things which are natural - sex, periods, people dying agonising deaths - that are also inappropriate to show small children.

Periods?! My daughter comes to the toilet with me and sees the blood and mooncup, period pants etc. better they see that young too so it’s not a taboo!
Yep there’s a risk with them seeing something “bad” with birth, but I guess you’d know the point to remove them from the room.

Not necessarily. I saw a thread on here where a home labour was going really well until the baby was born floppy and not breathing, and had to be blue lighted to hospital in a panic. The OP was asking for advice as it had traumatised her children (who were in attendance), who could no longer look at babies or hear anything about birth as it had upset them too much.

Ha, I promise not all of the hypnobirthing digital pack is hippy-dippy or super radical! A lot of it is just common sense decision making and talking about the physiology of birth. Would really recommend. You can skip all the breathing and meditation stuff if you’re not into that. They sometimes do a special offer price so it wouldn’t surprise me if they put an offer on in celebration of the birth of this baby. Usual price is £39 but I’ve seen it reduced to £15 before.

The Instagram and Facebook page is a bit more intense with birth stories etc. I avoided looking at all of that for my first pregnancy but now I’m onto my second baby I find myself a lot more interested in other people’s experiences and recalling the feelings and emotions from my first labour.

I know what you mean about small children getting involved. It makes me feel a bit icky to be honest. One of my family friends just had her 4th baby. It was a homebirth and she got her 3 other children (5, 4 & 10months) out of bed at 11pm in order to watch the baby crowning 😩 and they had school the next day! Poor kids.

Just to add, I’m all for educating children on childbirth etc from a young age - no problem with that at all imo!

I’m one of the unlucky ones who had a traumatic few minutes once my son was born. He didn’t gasp for breath for 2 minutes and they said they needed to take him. There was no indication anything was wrong during labour. Luckily everything was fine and I don’t want to scare anyone! It’s just one of those things really. I’m glad I didn’t have a child there to witness that

She woke a 10 month old at 11pm to watch her crowning?! Sorry but that’s fucked up! Unless somebody can explain why a 10 month old would benefit from it?!

I’m probably not PBC’s target audience though. My birth plan is very much epidural, epidural, epidural then have DH bring me a Maccy’s when it’s over!

Yep! 😂 not my cuppa tea that’s for sure! I wouldn’t dream of waking a 10 month old up for anything at 11pm…dealing with an overtired baby the next day is so not worth it.

I had a friend whos birth plan was the same…epidural then pizza 😂 I think she did a free hypnobirthing taster session and decided it wasn’t worth it for her. I still think the decision making framework is useful for during pregnancy (if they want to induce you early for example) but that kind of information can probably be found online for free. Just google the BRAIN decision making and I'm sure you’d get all the info anyway

Oh my god. That's literally how I did my babies including the maccys which was the best I've ever had

fuck the tea and toast, we want a triple and full fat coke 🥤

any news on Siobhan?

Everyone told me the toast would be the best thing I’d ever tasted after birth…by the time I was stitched up my toast was cold and at they’d only given me a measly half a cup of tea 💔

I’ve been checking all the socials and haven’t seen any news about Siobhan yet! Starting to get a bit worried. I thought someone would’ve put something out by now just to say they are ok. It’s been a long time since 9:15pm last night and they knew people were watching live and waiting. Hopefully she’s just in her newborn bubble and everything is fine

I remember getting a few disapproving looks as I ate KFC around DD’s jaundice incubator on something like day 5. Which I understand but I was desperate for hot food after 5 days of no sleep and the hospital food, which was mainly served in a canteen at the bottom of the corridor during specific time slots - if you snooze, you lose, and missed a meal! After living off Soreen bars and bananas for days I cracked and sent DH out for fried chicken 😬

hopefully she’s fine, she might just be a bit disappointed it didn’t go to plan, or fast asleep!

She’s updated - all went fine! An 18 hour labour though 🤯🤯🤯

So relieved everything seems to be ok. No mention of how baby’s doing but if the cord wasn’t cut for 40 minutes that’s a good sign. Wonder if she’ll confirm the sex? I know it’s none of our business really but would be lovely for her to have a girl after 3 boys (if that’s what she was hoping for of course!)
Looking forward to her sharing the video. Sounds like it was a lovely birth in the end. Great that the midwives set up led candles for her around the room

She did another post to say the baby’s fine and healthy. It’s a they/them at the moment though, so looks like she isn’t sharing the sex. I suspect a boy 💙