Article published February 21, 2006
Smile nice for hospital video ban
Thumbing through one of the news weeklies, I stumbled across a development so apparently startling that it ought to be a no-brainer.
Get this: In more and more American hospitals, video cameras are no longer welcome in the delivery room.
When I read this, I couldn't help thinking, "Excuse me, but when were video cams ever welcome there?" No, I mean truly welcome - not just tolerated.
OK, OK, yes. Of course I'm aware that lots of earnest parents look forward to documenting the momentous occasion of a child's birth.
But bear in mind, these are typically the first-timers, the same people who are likely to buy into the whole "deep breathing can conquer pain" schtick.
And, who knows? Maybe for some women, that's actually true.All I know is, No. 1, I have yet to meet even one of those women. And, No. 2, I sure ain't one of 'em.
Newsweek quoted Laura Riley, the director of labor and delivery at Massachusetts General Hospital.
She showed concern not only for the possibility that camera equipment could stray within the "sterile field," but also for the idea that dad-as-director diminishes a father's true labor-room role.
"The support person is there," Ms. Riley pointed out, "to support the mother through the birth, not to be behind the camera."
Your labor coach, in other words, should say "More ice chips, honey?" and not, "Lights! Camera! Action!"
Personally, I have little remaining memory of any of the 30-plus hours during which I labored to give birth to my daughter (motto: "Gosh, it's so nice 'n' toasty in here, what's the rush?").
Instead, I'm left with snapshots, brief moments flash-frozen in memory with no regard for the actual sequence of events.
There's the hard-to-forget image of me, Ms. Natural Child Birth Proponent of 1989, asking - begging, pleading, keening - for drugs.
And there's me again, hearing the too-awful news that the only anesthesiologist in the whole stinking hospital is now in emergency surgery and cannot possibly return to hit me up again with the pain-relieving drugs that have long since worn off.
Oh, and here's another snapshot. It's of me again - sweaty, in pain, exhausted - solemnly explaining to a nurse that, on second thought, I've changed my mind. I do not want to have a baby. No, I would rather just go home now. But thanks anyway.
These memory-snapshots are mortifying enough. I do not require videotaped evidence that I was not exactly at my stoic best during my one and only encounter with childbirth.
No, I think we should leave all that to the documentarians at the Discovery Health Channel.
Or at least to Tom and Katie, who are accustomed to the lens.
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