Please! Show me your childbirth video!
Posted at 3:00 PM Nov 05, 2009
By Andrea Grimes
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After you upload your version of the "Single Ladies" dance to YouTube, make sure to upload a video of you giving birth to your child. After all, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, everyone's doing it.
On YouTube moms are sharing videos of their real-life experiences with giving birth under hypnosis, to Caesarean sections, to births in bathtubs. One remarkable video of a home birth has been viewed more than 2 million times. (The majority of YouTube videos depict home births because many hospitals restrict the use of video cameras due to liability issues.)
Even though YouTube has rules and regulations about what's posted, the childbirth videos on the site are quite graphic. "Nudity is generally prohibited on YouTube," Victoria Grand, the site's head of policy, told The New York Times last spring. "But we make exceptions for videos that are educational, documentary or scientific."
And I completely endorse this idea. This may come as a surprise to some--I make no secret of the fact that I am terrified of everything to do with children. (With the exception of, perhaps, the way in which children are made. That part I like.) So wouldn't I want women to keep their big, birthy TMI vaginas away from my computer screen? No way. Pile it on, ladies. Pile. It. On.
And part of it is practical: sexual education in most U.S. schools can barely be classified as "education" at all. Opening up dialogues and conversations about pregnancy and childbirth mean bringing sexuality, and specifically female sexuality, out into the open. You can ignore what happens after a scene cut on Gossip Girl, but a sweaty baby-cooter is a little harder to brush aside when you're talking about the consequences and realities of sex. And since many YouTube births are home births, it also supports the de-medicalization of pregnancy and puts agency into the hands of mothers who are tired of being bossed around by doctors who purportedly know what's best.
What say you, Dolls? Do you want to watch strangers pop out younguns on the t00bs?
Comments
I don't want to watch it but I don't want to stop other people from watching it. If that's their...oh what's the word?
Fetish.
Wait, that's not what I meant either.
Posted 11/05/2009 at 03:19:32 PMWhen the day comes that I heave one outta me, there will be no recording device of any sort near me at all. In fact, it will be your job Andy to make sure everyone is inspected for having no iPhone, flip or analong tape on their persons that enter into my delivery room. You can be my at the hospital security for preventing any footage that might have to do with things coming out of my vagina. (this will be done in the waiting room of course...you will also be no where near my vagina...i swearz)
I couldn't even watch my grandpa's cataract surgery...
Posted 11/05/2009 at 03:42:15 PMErrr...uh, I guess if it floats your boat, by all means, post and view. I just think that this should be a personal moment between you and your family, but it is a free country.
Also it opens up the door for some new subset of creepy fetish, which.... while I am all for indulging in whatever (legal) activity it is that gets you off, that just seems about 15 different kinds of wrong.
Posted 11/05/2009 at 03:52:20 PMAlso that picture is my new desktop. Awesome.
Posted 11/05/2009 at 03:53:34 PMIt was a birthing video in sex ed class that convinced me to never have children. I still cross my legs when I think of it.
Posted 11/05/2009 at 04:38:16 PMQuick! Somebody tell Kiala not to use words she doesn't understand yet. Poor lil thing. Tell her partner to go stroke her little bitty head and tell her over and over how pwetty she be.
Posted 11/05/2009 at 05:04:58 PMI'm really not interested in watching others in childbirth, but if it stops some of the idiot teenagers from reproducing, then I'm all for it. I should probably specify that I'm referring to the teenagers that think its romantic to get knocked up, buy oh-so-cute clothes, think that a baby is going to be sweet, cute puppy-kitten creature and have no real plans on how they're going to bring the child up, where they're going to get money from (other than welfare) and how they're going to care for them properly.
Posted 11/05/2009 at 10:18:28 PMI'm opposed to it, but that's because the natural birth nutjobs piss me off.
Alright, it's one specific nut job who married a friend of mine.
And she refuses to get vaccinations for her kids.
Just typing about it is enough to drive me into a frothing rage. I need to go and shoot a sack of potatoes now.
Posted 11/06/2009 at 09:40:47 AMOK, I thought I had something to say about videotaping births (something along the lines of, "no way in hell," I think), but I'm sidetracked now.
Posted 11/06/2009 at 03:34:29 PMIs "shoot a sack of potatoes" some kind of euphemism I'm unaware of?
I don't know what's more disturbing, that someone always brings up some wierd "fetish" that might exist out there, or that there are people who spend their time thinking up weird fetishes they could have and defending against it.
I'm going to go build Purple People Eater defenses now. Just in case there's one out there.
Posted 11/06/2009 at 03:40:54 PMThat said, I totally agree. Just go look at Lamebook's recent post of a water birth. The comments are a gold mine of stupid.