Birth Vlogs

I once had the marvelous honor of being my best friend's vaginal cinematographer.  She had asked me to come to the hospital when she had her baby, but warned me that they had strict rules about how many people could be in the room.  I said I'd be happy to sit in the waiting room and just be distantly supportive if that was what she wanted.  She offered to lie and say I was her doula.  As I had no prior experience with child birth in any respect, this seemed to be a stretch (though stretching is part of the doula's métier).  So I packed myself a satchel of books and prepared to enjoy the delights of a hospital waiting room.  To my surprise, I was allowed in the room, an eventuality for which I was not prepared.  My friend had had her epidural and was napping.  I sat in a corner feeling useless yet desiring to be supportive.  Then suddenly it was time to push.  The lights were dim.  My friend said "get the camcorder out of my bag!" I assumed she was kidding.  She was not.  The other non-hospital people present were her husband (useful for encouragement), Bianca (useful for at that point moderate levels of medical knowledge and support) and me (useful, apparently, as a key grip).

I did my best.  We had not discussed this in advance, but do you say no to a friend in need? Also I had never really worked a video recording device before.  I wasn't sure what footage she was hoping for so I did my best to balance tasteful shots of her perineum (is there such a thing?) and views of her beatifically miserable face, while not getting in the way of people who actually needed to accomplish medical things.  My unexpected vantage gave me a front row seat (so to speak) to the miracle of life, and the no less miraculous but much grosser placenta.

The crowning glory of my film career was that in the dark and unfamiliar with the device, I had not actually recorded anything.  I had just stared with uncomfortable fixity at an acreage with which I was not familiar.  It brought us closer as friends, and I have certainly offered to return the favor via FaceTime or Skype.  I am sorry I didn't get the video she wanted, though possibly my footage wasn't what she would have wanted in any case.

This experience has returned to me in the last few weeks as I've found myself watching a new (to me) genre called "birth vlogs."  Apparently cute couples make money by making video diaries of their lives and as with all reality shows, childbirth makes for a blockbuster episode.  I've been watching them to try to get in the mood for parturition.  I figure if I remember feeling excited or weepy or seeing what a newborn looks like this will be helpful to me in an unspecifiable way.  The vlogs differ from my career behind the camera in at least two ways -- there is actual film footage of the event, and the camera is always angled in a tasteful and discreet way to maximize action without revealing from whence the baby emerges.

The thing is, these videos also differ significantly from what I remember childbirth being like.  At the most, these women seem to experience mild discomfort, then they get the epidural and everything is sunshine and rainbows and sometimes they nap and then there's a baby.  I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.  I remember being clenched in pain so bad I couldn't speak, move or effectively communicate in any way except intermittent gasps or gestures before the epidural.  I remember contractions being essentially relentless, coming on top of each other so the possibility of having a cheerful one on one interview with a camera was non-existent.

I remember getting the epidural, but I also remember it not working entirely, and maybe that is why the idea of napping or smiling or talking seems so foreign.  At first it only worked on half my body so the nurses tried to get me on my side so it would drip in that direction. Or something.  I just remember being in too much pain to roll and needing a prying paddle.  I remember round 2 of the epidural working a bit more, but leaving a "hole" the size of a dessert plate where I could still feel everything.  And I remember sitting there trying to survive each contraction that the dessert-plate-hole-from-hell was inflicting on my body.  This does not match with what I've seen on vlogs.  Maybe I looked dainty and sweet and only mildly discomfited by the whole business and that can be my comfort.