A lovely thing
After all my ranting, I figured, let’s post something happy.
I’ve talked about wanting to become a midwife before, and about the possibilities I see for dignity and beauty and peacefulness in birth that most women in the U.S. never seem to have available to them.
But since pictures tell more than words, here’s a lovely homebirth by a nice French Canadian couple. I especially like this video because it has less cheesy music and more of the actual labor…and better production values. Most homebirth movies (and yeah, I DO surf Youtube for those, so what?) tend to be just the finale (baby popping out), and underlit, and/or mixed together by someone with a fondness for Bryan Adams. Shudder.
This one has a nice pace without being too long, and it’s just exactly the kind of birth I think most women, deep down, would love to have. I like how the midwife is so chill, just letting the mom do her thing and not being all grabby and poke-y.
I guess I should warn you about nudity…but honestly, it’s a birthing video, and babies come out of vaginas, so, you know, don’t be shocked by that. There aren’t any close-up cooter shots, if that sort of thing bothers you.
Update: more midwifery goodness. A fascinating story about a black midwife in the 50s, and how her family found out she’d been featured iin a famous documentary. More about the 1953 film “All My Babies” here; it was inducted into the National Film Registry in 2002.
I so want to see that!