"It was just too dark in your tummy"

May 14, 2014 7:37 PM

This Little Girl Is Watching Her Own Birth For The Very First Time [totally SFW] A young girl watches a video of herself being born. Her face is amazingly expressive!
posted by QuakerMel (34 comments total)

I'm a little teary right now.

It was really interesting to me on a personal level because my daughter is similarly expressive and I don't see that kind of facial motion and range in a lot of kids. The big eyes, the unconscious mimicking, the hands.
posted by geek anachronism at 8:07 PM on May 14, 2014

That was really great. Thanks.
posted by Mr.Me at 8:15 PM on May 14, 2014

Robbie Williams on watching his child being born: "It was like my favorite pub burning down".
posted by hippybear at 8:28 PM on May 14, 2014 [7 favorites]

"this will happen to me when i'm grown up, too"
posted by pyramid termite at 8:40 PM on May 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

Maybe I'm an old fashioned prude, but seeing my mother's distended vagina wouldn't get the same positive reaction as for this kid.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:42 PM on May 14, 2014 [7 favorites]

...
...I...I'm terribly sorry to say this, but the piano soundtrack was really really irritating.
posted by aramaic at 8:45 PM on May 14, 2014 [23 favorites]

I mean to say, interesting concept, and it's more my failing than anything ... but I had a hard time getting past the piano.
posted by aramaic at 8:48 PM on May 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm really glad no one filmed my daughter's birth, because when she crowned, I looked down at myself and said, "Oh my god, it looks like a meatball!" My girl's first nicknames were, from me, Meatball Head, and from her dad, as she was born on New Year's Eve, Daddy's Little Tax Break. She's 12 now, and I doubt she would forgive either one of us.
posted by Ruki at 8:55 PM on May 14, 2014 [15 favorites]

After I hit Post Comment, I remembered that there are MeFites I know IRL, so maybe I shouldn't have shared that, but on the other hand, my midwife was a family friend that I often played Hi-Lo-Jack with after my daughter's birth, so, no shame.
posted by Ruki at 8:58 PM on May 14, 2014

It was a charming video. But, yeah... The piano made me want to head up to Men's Furnishings to get a new belt and dress socks.
posted by thinman at 9:00 PM on May 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

pyramid termite: ""this will happen to me when i'm grown up, too""

That goes *really* bad with my original joke I was going to put here of "Girl reacts to 2 Girls 1 Cup"...
posted by symbioid at 9:05 PM on May 14, 2014

but the piano soundtrack was really really irritating.

she gave birth to the piano, too - where's your compassion?
posted by pyramid termite at 9:07 PM on May 14, 2014 [7 favorites]

Am I the only one who thinks she looks really uncomfortable for most of this?
posted by Sara C. at 9:13 PM on May 14, 2014 [12 favorites]

Yeah, this doesn't look like all that much fun for the girl at all. Almost as if she was forced to watch it, especially towards the end where the mom is pressing her to pretend she liked watching this. I would never do this to my kids. Creepy as hell.
posted by monospace at 9:23 PM on May 14, 2014 [7 favorites]

"This will happen to me when I'm grown up, too."

Only if you want it to, kid. Only if you want it to.
posted by Westringia F. at 9:24 PM on May 14, 2014 [28 favorites]

During the last month or so, I've been showing my 4.5 year old daughter the 400 photos that I took during her birth (no video and no piano) and she can't have enough. Her face reacts in the same way when she looks at them, and I can only imagine what she really feels. It seems that she appreciates knowing how it went down
posted by growabrain at 9:46 PM on May 14, 2014

Thank fuck I was born before ubiquitous videography.
posted by pompomtom at 9:47 PM on May 14, 2014 [18 favorites]

Struck me as not something many mothers or daughters would think of doing. The mother seemed a little too invested in her daughter's reaction to watching the whole thing while the daughter seemed uncertain and even uncomfortable. It is as if the daughter is being coerced into watching a very intimate, prolonged and graphic experience. As if she's not allowed to have private reactions or even questions. Maybe she really hated this.
posted by Anitanola at 9:53 PM on May 14, 2014 [9 favorites]

seeing my mother's distended vagina wouldn't get the same positive reaction as for this kid.

So..... I have ten younger siblings, nine of whom were born at home. Two were born after I moved out, so I was present for seven births. I was five years old for the first one, and I barely remember it; the last one happened when I was seventeen.

I don't clearly remember the first one, but I do remember a couple which happened when I was around the age of the girl in this video. Those births were dramatic and exciting; all the adults were very serious and excited, and hey, mom's working hard, and whoa, new baby! Wow. Mom's so relieved. Look at the baby's tiny little fingers! So cute! It was intense, but basically good. My parents set the room up so there was no direct crotch viewing for us kids, but obviously she's laying there in a bathrobe and we saw more of her body than usual - but there was a sense of... I don't know... being outside of normal reality. It was obvious from the way all the adults acted that this was different and that was OK, it wasn't embarrassing like it would be if it we were to see her semi-naked in normal life.

Birth got much harder when I was a few years older, and had developed more of a sense of empathy, but had yet to acquire a more adult level of emotional stability. I felt extremely uncomfortable watching my mother experience such intense pain. In fact I guess I shouldn't say I was "present" for seven births, since I kept away, doing chores around the house while the last one was being born, because I just couldn't deal with it. It actually kind of did a number on me, emotionally. I think maybe part of the reason I've never had kids of my own was the incredibly intense feeling I had, while watching my mother in that extreme stress, that I could never willingly cause that to happen to someone. My perspective has changed over the years and it is no longer an upsetting memory but I've still never gotten comfortable with the idea of having kids.

Anyway. I guess the point is that if my experience is at all worthy of generalization, this kid is probably fine, but it'd be better to put the video aside after she gets closer to puberty.
posted by Mars Saxman at 10:44 PM on May 14, 2014 [22 favorites]

Thank fuck I was born before ubiquitous videography.

At least it wasn't a selfie.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:53 PM on May 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

Am I the only one who thinks she looks really uncomfortable for most of this?

Yea, and it made me really uncomfortable because of it. And i'm not looking forward to the 30 more times this is going to pop up on social networks after this while everyone d'awwws.

This is just like... really awkward. And not because i'm uncomfortable with the concept, but because she is and it reminds me of parents dressing their kids up in weird "cutsey" outfits or something that you can tell just by looking they don't want to do... but more.
posted by emptythought at 11:45 PM on May 14, 2014 [8 favorites]

How did they get the piano into the delivery room?
posted by pracowity at 2:02 AM on May 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

I didn't think she looked uncomfortable, just engrossed and fascinated. Surely she's old enough to go "Eeewwww!" and run out of the room if she didn't want to see it? (Which, by the way, would be my reaction if my own mother decided to screen this particular show. Miracle schmiracle - I can merrily live the rest of my days without seeing my Mother's lala up close.)
posted by billiebee at 3:04 AM on May 15, 2014

"Watching her own birth for the first time".

It is that emphasis that made me smile. Is the poor kid going to get regular repeats?
Cocktail bar music jokes aside, I'm genuinely interested in who later watches birth videos - both for the parents and for the person being born.
posted by rongorongo at 3:05 AM on May 15, 2014

I'm massively uncomfortable with the fact that the parents thought it was a good idea to put the video online. I mean, making the kid watch the birth in the first place is kinda weird to me but I get that kids are curious and she may have asked to see it. However, filming her reaction and sticking it on You Tube just seems outright exhibitionist and/or exploitative on the part of the parents.
posted by freya_lamb at 3:05 AM on May 15, 2014 [9 favorites]

I'm kinda surprised the parents didn't start a new blog about this. Parents always think they're kids are so adorable in everything they do.

That said, this kid's expressions are pretty wonderful.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:25 AM on May 15, 2014

The mother seemed a little too invested in her daughter's reaction to watching the whole thing while the daughter seemed uncertain and even uncomfortable. It is as if the daughter is being coerced into watching a very intimate, prolonged and graphic experience

.....while being filmed by parents who are raring to go to get it up on Facebook/YouTube/Upworthy/etc. If your instinct as a parent when something funny or intimate or humiliating happens with your kid is, "This [thing that happens, or thing that I can engineer] would make it all the way to Buzzfeed, the Daily Mail, and the Weather Channel if I can just record it!" that is a world away from the normal parental instinct of, "my mom and sister need to see this!"

I find it uncomfortable that these kinds of viral videos of little kids demonstrate that ANY parent who craves attention via their progeny can be a stage parent now....and the results are there forever, around the globe, regardless of how the kid might feel about having it out there for the next however many years of their lives. As someone with a few family members who had a touch of narcissism without the best boundaries towards the dignity and personhood of their kids, I'm so fucking glad I wasn't born in the last 10 years. I already had baby/childnood stories used to humiliate me in my later years without actual video or 20,000 likes on facebook.

I wonder if they'll go M.C. Escher and make a video of her at 13 watching herself watch THIS video.
posted by blue suede stockings at 4:31 AM on May 15, 2014 [7 favorites]

growabrain: "During the last month or so, I've been showing my 4.5 year old daughter the 400 photos that I took during her birth (no video and no piano) and she can't have enough."

Yeah, my preschooler wants to talk about the day he was born ALL THE TIME and see the pictures, although ours jump from "here's mommy's giant belly" to "here's a naked angry baby the nurses are cleaning up!"

I feel like he probably wouldn't be weirded out by pictures of the whole graphic process (he is fascinated by people's insides, the more specific and detailed the better), but it's definitely not a way that *I* wanted to be photographed or filmed. (And I definitely imagine as they get towards puberty it becomes awkward to see pictures of your actual moment of birth, and then declines in awkwardness again later.)

I thought the parent posting this video was pretty weird, but on the scale of "terrible parenting that is worth my time to be judgmental about" it doesn't really even register.

(If we want to be judgmental, my husband had a work colleague who e-mailed out a bunch of pictures of his wife having just had a home waterbirth to the entire office (and a bunch of casual acquaintances who'd just said "oh, congrats on the baby, let us know when he arrives!") with a long narrative, like three pages, of the excruciating details of the birth, and then some pictures of the baby, and you're scrolling down, seeing the belly and the smiling parents and thinking "next comes the baby!" but no! NEXT COMES THE VAGINA OF YOUR WORK COLLEAGUE'S WIFE. LIKE SIX PICTURES OF IT. And when we get to the baby, it's the naked baby on top of the totally naked mom. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE, MAN.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:23 AM on May 15, 2014 [16 favorites]

pompomtom: "Thank fuck I was born before ubiquitous videography."

You'd think so, but I'm kind of middle aged and I still wonder why dad thought it proper to take giant slide quality photos of both me and my brother crowning. Eeeewwwww.

That being said, I have videotape(not 8mm) of myself as a toddler in '74.
posted by Sphinx at 6:33 AM on May 15, 2014

When our first kid was born, my wife and I thought it would be a great idea to screen the long and very graphic birth video for the entire extended family! Great-grandmother, grandparents, aunt and uncle, and niece and nephew about 10 and 8 respectively. The youngest (nephew) and the oldest (great-grandma, age 85) left the room mortified. The rest soldiered on through it.

We were temporarily insane I guess.
posted by stargell at 8:33 AM on May 15, 2014 [4 favorites]

obviously, the perception of this changes through time.
Mars Saxman's story was fascinating. I have a distinct memory of being present at my younger cousins birth, but in retrospect, I think we just came into the hospital ward so soon that there was still blood and that smell. Maybe we waited outside.
I spent a lot of my childhood on a farm, so animals giving birth were routine. I didn't find it scary or tmi at all, when adults in my family told about birth experiences or when we learnt about it at school. But my ex-husband was truly shocked, even before our baby was even born and moreso during the birth.
I don't know, I don't want to judge other people's perceptions, but I do think birth is a very natural event which most children should be familiar with somehow. I think most of my own ease and confidence with giving birth came with familiarity and trust. My mum and my aunts saying yeah it hurts but is so amazing and look at the beautiful baby.
posted by mumimor at 3:16 PM on May 15, 2014

I spent a lot of my childhood on a farm, so animals giving birth were routine. I didn't find it scary or tmi at all, when adults in my family told about birth experiences or when we learnt about it at school.

This is true of me, too, and I get that little kids have a fascination with the story of how they were born, and I don't think there's anything wrong in showing your kid this video if they want to see it.

But damn, she sure does look like she regrets asking.

Also this really, really feels like something that should be a private experience just for her, not for the public via the web. I recognized a lot of my own complicated feelings from childhood playing across that girl's face, and I'm not sure I would want a video of myself experiencing those things online for everyone to see.
posted by Sara C. at 3:21 PM on May 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Like I said though, that animatedness is kinda rare, or it is in my experience. And she didn't look uncomfortable at all - or rather, it's that empathic mimickry. What do you think mama's face is doing in the video? You can see the kid mimic Lamaze breathing - mirror neurons, whatever it is.

Putting it up online, yeah, I'm not over-keen on it, but I think reading discomfort into the child's experience is a little overreaching.
posted by geek anachronism at 5:35 PM on May 15, 2014

Mars Saxman, what a fascinating story. Thank you for sharing that.

Relatedly, I thought her saying "sorry, mommy, that I did this... I'm very sorry," was sad, even though she said it with a smile. She fully appreciates that she witnessed something very difficult & painful (mimicking the lamaze, like g.a. said), but she can't yet grasp the joyousness of it. That seems like a heavy thing to put on a kid. When I was little, I was abstractly aware that childbirth was a painful and dangerous thing, but I think it would have been very different to be confronted with extremely visceral evidence of hearing and seeing in video how I had "done that" to my own dear mother. No wonder she says sorry; it's a lot to handle without an adult reference frame.
posted by Westringia F. at 7:20 AM on May 16, 2014 [1 favorite]