“Why? Why would you do that?” That’s what I asked myself and many other people to whom we hinted we might film our birth. As I became more educated and confident about birth, I realised I wouldn’t ask myself why would I have a beautiful and happy moment on record. The problem is that by default we think birth will be something traumatic and also a bit gross. And when I re-watch our birth video, it’s not a walk in the park to relive some of those sensations through the sound of my breathing but wow is it a powerful reminder of how strong my body has been. When we watched it a few times right after the birth, it might have been the hormones or the far stronger sensations I was experiencing from breastfeeding, it didn’t feel as hard. Now that those effects have worn out and I watch it a year and half later, I feel the moments when I was most struggling and I want to go to my birthing self on the video and hug her.
We said to ourselves that should there have been any traumatic memories on that video we wouldn’t watch it again. The videographer behind the camera was one of my yoga students and we started working together on a documentary she wanted to put together. We had the time to connect and spend time together before she witnessed her first live birth. She was an angel and was literally invisible to me in the room of the birth centre. I did keep my eyes closed for most of the time but I can’t tell you where she was standing throughout the whole time. And she caught in the most delicate way, the moment when Leonardo’s wrinkled little face slid out of me and into the water which just punches tears out of my eyes without fail. Every single time!
It’s not for everybody but if we could go back we would probably do it again. Yes, it might seem a bit intrusive when you think about it at first, you might think it’s a private and delicate affair but if you think about birth as one of the most important and beautiful moments in your life, just like we have videos and photographs of weddings and parties, I don’t know why we wouldn’t of THE BIRTH DAY!
Below is a link to snippets of the documentary that my friend put together and you’ll see glimpses of our birth: