The Video, 29 weeks 3 days

Last week we had our monthly group appointment. Lego's heartbeat sounded good and I'm measuring right on track, as usual! During the group part we watched a video of a woman labor and give birth without receiving anything for pain. The nurse-midwives wanted us to see a birth as it really looks; labor lasting many hours with only a few people around and most of it appearing pretty dull to the casual observer. The media portrays labor and birth as a quick, intense event that begins with the water breaking and after an action packed rush to the hospital a squalling infant appears amidst an excited crowd of hospital staff and main characters.

The last time I had seen an uncensored recording of a real birth was in high school health class. The birthing video was infamous around school for showing everything, and most of my peers were vocal about finding it unpleasant. At the time the video was pretty effective birth control, and I have to admit that I averted my eyes when the baby began to crown. My teenage self was far too much of a prude to want to see that!

Last week, my reaction was quite different. I found myself tearing up as the baby was born and placed on his mother's chest. As the lights flicked on and we looked around, it became clear that every single pregnant woman in the room was wiping her eyes. One of the nurse-midwives made a joke about never having seen a woman cry during that video before (obviously, pregnant women cry all the time when shown the video), and we moved on with our discussion. I all but forgot about it, but later it became clear that at least some of the men had been utterly baffled by the ladies' tears. Dan just couldn't wrap his head around it, and asked me what had evoked my emotional response. He emphasized the fact that "every single pregnant woman cried". He has certainly noticed my increased capacity for waterworks during the last several months, and told me he thought it was the crazy cocktail of pregnancy hormones. He might have been right, but I warned him he better watch himself talking like that around a pregnant woman!