Real Birth Footage -

I haven't looked at the footage but just wanted to say it is probably a good idea to look at some real birth footage to give you an idea of what it's like.

I'd only seen the birth shows on Foxtel. I'd watched heaps and none of them prepared me for the reality of birth. It all seemed so nice and orderly and well controlled by drugs, resting nicely inbetween contractions, chatting to relatives etc, it wasn't like that for me.

Most of those shows are from the US and they do seem to do things differently to us.

There seems to be two types of birth - the natural drug free kind in a birth centre or at home or the highly interfered with kind at a hospital.

At hospital there all women appear to be hooked up to monitors quite early in the labour and most of them seem to get offered epidurals before they've even experienced proper contractions (they barely seem in pain). I was never hooked up to any kind of monitor even though I had a long labour and at times it was difficult for them to hear bubs heart. In most cases here they will not offer you an epidural - it's something you have to ask for and they'll normally only administer it once you've been in quite a bit of pain and tried the other options first.

They don't seem to use gas in the US, or if they do they don't show it on the shows.

They pretty much always have a doctor deliver their baby whereas here it's midwives who do that (unless complications arise).

In the US they seem to offer induction drugs quite early when labour is not progressing as it should, whereas here the midwives will let you go way longer before any interventions happen.

The birth shows on TV sanitise the whole process. They make it look less painful than it is (I think because most of them have had epidurals), cleaner than it is, quicker than it is. They always make it look like women just push a couple of times and out pops baby but they've obviously heavily edited the footage as most women would push for more than the time they show. I pushed for almost two hours, they would've had to make a mini series out of my birth!!!

Unfortunately I only saw footage that resembled my birth experience after the birth. Had I seen that beforehand I would've been far better prepared as I would've done a lot more reading on labour, particularly on stage 2 labour - it was much harder than I expected it to be. I found it really hard to hold my breath while pushing.

I was quite vocal through my birth too and my DF got a slap in the face as well (accidental).