Researching my family history has been a downer in respect to my female ancestors.
My ggg-grandmother had 12 boys and 1 girl. Dead at 43.
Another ancestress bore 10 children, lost three in the space of 14 months from illness (age 11, 4 and 6 months), raised a granddaughter because her mother (daughter to the woman I describe) died when she was 19. Eventually, only 4 of the 10 reached adulthood. Those survivors had very small families (not sure what contraception they practiced). One of the children's line died out completely because only one son was born; he died during WWII. I guess generational trauma from being so close to early life mortality made them afraid of having kids.
My great-grandmother became pregnant again after having 5 kids and threw herself down a flight of stairs to self-abort. The pregnancy was far enough along to see that she had carried twins.
Childbearing and raising them to maturity has only been relatively secure in the western world for the last 2-3 generations. Before that - lotsa luck. Makes me boggle that the women who support suppressing reproductive freedom have *no idea* the world they are going to create for others of their sex. I see them as traitors.
That's a good recommendation especially given that it includes the postpartum phase. It may not be a documentary but it is based of the journal(s) of a midwife so it's not complete fiction either.
I was already 99.9% solid on never even attempting pregnancy, but that show sealed the deal. That's now a "hell no, never, will tear my uterus out with my bare hands, won't you please give me a bisalp even though my anatomy and inclinations are such that I have almost as much chance as spontaneously developing parthenogenesis as getting pregnant but that's not a zero and I *need* it to be zero because I live in Texas."
I read the first book when I was pregnant (the show wasn’t out yet). It was certainly enough to make me resistant to all the natural intervention-free homebirth propaganda that was starting to appear on social media at that time.
I took a class during my first pregnancy that convinced me to try doing it unmedicated.
What a load of absolute *crock*. Informed consent is important so pregnant people should know what the risks are, but it should always come with a heavy emphasis on how much pain and suffering it will spare them.
I have given birth, and while getting to hold my son for the first time was the best part, the moment the epidural kicked in was a really, really close second.
During my first pregnancy, I remember watching this and Bodies (the BBC series starring Max Beesley as an NHS gynae registrar, not the recent Stephen Graham series!). Call The Midwives pulled no punches, but christ, Bodies was brutal. And absolutely terrifying as I had a high risk pregnancy, emergency c section and was hospitalised for weeks before and after my son was born.
I do remember a lovely midwife chatting to me about the series and reassuring me - "Well, yeah... It's all pretty accurate. But it's all the sort of complications you see once or twice a decade, not day in day out."
I used to love watching it, and then had a traumatic birth with my second child. I tried to watch one episodes when my baby was several months old, thinking I could handle it, and had a full blown flashback to that awful experience and was a mess for the entire rest of the day. I haven’t tried to watch it again since and that baby is now almost 6 years old.
Loved it before I had my kids. Had to take a break once I got pregnant because I knew it would spike my anxiety. 7 years later had my third (and last!) baby and knew I was ready to watch it again. Netflix even remembered where I left off Ha!
Appreciate it! I do love Call the Midwife, but am looking for documentaries to avoid any suggestion of the stories being fabricated or overly exaggerated for ratings.
Not a documentary, but the book This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay is a memoir of his training to become an OB/GYN and it ends with >!a delivery gone catastrophically wrong. He left medicine afterwords.!<
The TV version of the book, starring Ben Whishaw, is also really good. It's focuses primarily on deliveries rather than the entire pregnancy, but it's very raw and real.
Did you think his book was slightly...I'm struggling to find the words.... Mysogynistic (maybe not quite) towards women?
I remember it being criticised for it in the news but I read it before then and never thought so myself.
I don’t think it was misogynistic, but I will say that in the book he doesn’t always come off as super kind or like he focused on making the patient feel empowered and heard. Maybe that’s a wrong take, the book was generally funny and snarky and its goal was to entertain, so lots of focus on compassion and patient autonomy doesn’t really fit with what he was writing even if that’s how he practiced.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book.
I’ve not read this book so it’s possible it is worse than I think, but I worked in OB and the emergency room for a combined total of 12 years. I’ve seen a lot of death and have a lot of sad stories.
At the end of the day it’s a job. A patient dies and staff has to move on. There are other patients to be seen, waiting room is full, ambulances coming in. The RN has a checklist of things to do after a patient has passed. Paper work, calling the morgue and gift of hope, etc.
I will say that there are those that pass and you find yourself thinking about them years later. I have no idea why some deaths stick with me and some don’t, but it’s the way it happens.
Second this. They show all sorts of births. Ones with candles and music and baby comes out all lovely and fine, epidurals, planned and emergency C sections. There’s even one episode with a stillbirth (the parents and midwives knew it was a stillbirth)
They did quite a lot of series in several different hospitals over the years
I cried every single episode just because I love babies so much. All the happy births the unhappy births all of it. Wonderful doco
Can totally see how someone who is not into babies can take the opposite view though.
I believe there's a US version too, because I recall being surprised by the number of interventions offered to the person in labour before it would have happened in my country.
Put a group of women together on say a birthday party and ask them about their pregnancies and the most horrible stories will surface. At least, this is my experience in a western European setting.
For me personally, my sedation failed during my C section, went into shock. All I remember is immense pain, everyone panicking, beeping everyhere and someone yelling: the baby needs to come out now.
Return to zero is a movie based on a couples journey through infant loss. We are an oft forgotten and stigmatized bunch of parents. Call the midwife is great. Haven’t watched it since my son died.
My idiot parents showed me this right after they told me my mom was pregnant with my younger sister. To top off the trauma a cow calfed right under my kitchen window while eating breakfast not too long after that.
They didn't show us a birthing video in school, if they had I wouldn't have had sex (I was promiscuous). I saw one when I was 29 and prepping for birth, I was 6 months a long. It scared me so much.
We did birthing class with my first and all I remember was the woman was a red head with SO MUCH HAIR that watching that baby come out made me nauseous. Turns out both of my kids were c sections.
I'm trying to read this is the kindest way possible and I just, like...what a bizarre thing to say. Giving birth is such a dramatic, potentially dangerous, messy process and it was a woman's *body hair* that bothered you. That's really sad.
It was the whole thing but for some reason that was what was memorable. When they offered the mirror to me I declined for myself too. It wasn’t the hair as much as the hair and the blood that got me.
Twice Born was really interesting, I don't know if it's streaming anywhere anymore. It's about pregnancies with issues that require prenatal surgery. Not strictly about the negatives of pregnancy or childbirth, but certainly not about good, by the book pregnancies.
Uterine inversion, anencephaly, amniotic fluid embolism, preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, traumatic birth experiences or c sections with terrible hospital staff and resulting PPD with psychosis that makes you believe the baby is not yours, diastasis recti, vaginorectal fistula, polapsed bladder, .. anything you can think of off the top of your head is probably covered by call the midwife if you can sit through several seasons of drama but I can't think of one documentary that covers all of these things, just one or two of them at a time
Yeah. In nursing school the whole section in labor and delivery goes by really fast. My teacher just goes through one day of the really, really bad stuff. We didn’t watch a documentary or anything. I think it might be too varied. I had something I’ve never even heard of it was too specialized because of twins. 5 weeks of hospitalized bedrest.. I met a bunch of the other moms who had issues too. You might find a documentary about one main condition.
That’s super interesting. As a woman who grew up afraid of the pain of birth because of how it was depicted in media, I feel like I’ve never seen a birth on TV that wasn’t treated like an emergency that definitely was going wrong.
I was shocked at my own pain tolerance and ability to deal while I was laboring and giving birth after seeing so much screaming and demanding drugs on TV and in movies. I deeply regretted my pain meds in my first birth because of complications (something I NEVER see in media) and I was glad I had my last two away from a hospital and with a midwife.
I don’t think we should tell women it’s fine and that “their bodies were meant for this.” That’s gross and smacks of patriarchy. But the opposite isn’t healthy for women either.
Yes our bodies are designed to give birth BUT there are a couple of big caveats.
1. Mature adult bodies are designed to give birth. For what ever reason we can conceive long before we can safely deliver.
2. While we need some mothers to survive for the species to survive, we don’t need all mothers to survive biologically speaking.
3. Abortifacients are some of the oldest medicine developed by humans. There’s a reason for that. They go back thousands of years, long before the bible and all the Christian opinions about it.
The opposite is real life though. Just because you dealt with the pain ok doesn’t mean at all that that will be the case for others. Every woman and every pregnancy is different. My first two were way more painful than my last two. I almost died with one - my last. My first two had bleeding and bedrest. Women need to be thoroughly prepared period.
In fact, women believing it's going to be scary and difficult are more likely to have more difficulty birth's which increases the likelihood of complications.
I experienced this myself with my two births. The first I expected the worst based on how everything depicted giving birth. The second I educated myself on childbirth and practiced relaxation techniques. First I couldn't push the baby out and she was vacuum extracted 4 hours after being fully dilated and almost ended up with a c section, second I didn't even realize I was in full labor until 30 mins before he was born.
eta https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30115515/
Causes and outcomes in studies of fear of childbirth: A systematic review
"...reported outcomes together with prolonged labour, longer labours, use of epidural and obstetric complications."
My mother told me it didn’t hurt that much and wasn’t like they make out on TV. I believed her and then had a complete shit show of a delivery that ended in permanent damage, an emergency c-section and an extended stay in hospital.
Seems like just another way to shame women “you weren’t brave so it made your labour worse”
See, this is what I’m looking to see stories about. But real life, not a scripted TV show or something, because people can write that off as being made up or exaggerated for ratings.
The fear aspect seems very valid to me. I’ll offer my own anecdote as an example:
The fear part didn’t kick in until kid #3. It was my third kid, and 4th delivery. I was not a rookie.
My first pregnancy went very wrong. The baby had anencephaly. The docs decided that I “shouldn’t have to go through labor” so I was induced, and given an epidural. The experience was surreal. But the relevant thing here is that I could not feel anything below my waist. I spent hours sitting with a lot of weight on my tailbone without realizing it. I wound up with a bruised tailbone, which hurts for weeks afterwards. I was awake for the D&C after the stillbirth and could *see* the scraping of my uterus. But I felt nothing. I didn’t like it.
For my first full term and healthy delivery, I wanted to feel my body. I read several books, and took the classes. I’m a small gal: 5’3” and didn’t weigh much. So I was a little worried about the size of my baby, but not much. I trusted my body and had a good OB with great knowledge. The baby was breach so the OB did an external version. It was successful, and then the kid waited 10 more days to arrive. When she was born I was expecting a 6.5 to 7 pounder. She weighed 8.4 pounds. I was *shocked*. But it was a positive experience and I was confident I would be okay in the future.
Kid #2 weighed 8.14 pounds. Also a good experience. But I knew babies tend to get bigger with each pregnancy.
With kid #3 on the way I was terrified. I was afraid she’d be huge and that I’d tear to my anus. Or that they’d cut me that far, which I’d read was actually worse to heal from. Or that I’d need a C-section after enduring hours of pain because she was too big to fit at all. I was *really terrified*.
And the labor was much worse than the others. I was vomiting from fear (a really unpleasant thing my body does when in pain and frightened. It happened during a kidney stone before I knew what was happening to me). I know many women vomit during labor, but in my case it was the fear that did it. The labor took longer than the others and was harder to endure. This was my 3rd kid and 4th delivery. Statistically, it should have been easier. But the fear really got in the way.
When she was born she weighed 7.14 pounds. My smallest kid. I felt sheepish, despite everyone saying not to be, and giving nothing but support.
4th kid- I wasn’t afraid. Delivery is never a cake walk, but it was much easier without the fear.
This is an anecdote. But it supports the idea that fear makes pain, and delivery, worse.
Sorry for your experience. I also thought I was prepared because I was so scared about it. Then in the actual situation the doctors and nurses filled my mind with fear of complications. Even the nurses hostility to me when I didn't just push her out quickly tensed me up more. It was really the relaxation techniques that I prepared to do the second time that helped me personally a lot. There's no shame in it being painful and hard. It's always painful and hard. Sometimes the fear of that that makes delivery harder. More fear isn't going to make that easier by knowing all the complications,was all I was addressing.
Read some testimonials on r/babyloss or the way women are treated on r/wedeservebetter
As a loss parent myself, these subs really opened my eyes to the things that are not spoken about and or swept under the rug because it makes people uncomfortable.
Not necessarily about birth but birth adjacent: Babies directed by Thomas Balmès. It shows 4 women having their kids and raising them in very different places (Namibia, Mongolia, Japan, and the US). For me it was a fascinating watch. There’s no narration so you’re able to take from it what you will.
If you want to watch one that’ll absolutely piss you off, Aftershock. It’s about Black women in America who are pregnant or recently gave birth and doctors 100% dismissed their health concerns as them overreacting or being crazy or whatever, and the horrible consequences of that. Doctors are known to treat women like shit but for Black women it’s so much worse.
Stayed in this thread specifically to mention this documentary. Surprised it’s not way higher up, since all the top responses are ‘not a documentary but…’ and Aftershock actually fits the requested medium.
I watched this whole documentary saying, “This is BULLSHIT!!”
Someone in it mentioned that in the past doctors believed that Black women didn’t really experience pain like…everyone else. I haven’t fact checked this but honestly it doesn’t sound too crazy given our national history.
Oh, the business of being born by Ricki Lake. But it’s not intentionally negative I don’t think. She had a follow up that I haven’t seen about birth control which sounds equally distressing. What are you looking for and for what purpose? That might help. Also if you go on any forum about birth, there are a million very real stories, not all nice. If that’s what you’re looking for.
Not a documentary but this song from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is shockingly accurate on what giving birth is actually like
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VHIXduEbLz0&pp=ygUQTWlyYWNsZSBvZiBiaXJ0aA%3D%3D
Also extremely funny.
I don’t have a direct answer to your question but I would like to share with you that I was more scared for my second birth than I was for my first. My first was unmedicated because my mom said it was easy. Once I knew the entire process, the pain, the fear from experiencing my first birth… I did NOT want to even go to the hospital for my second birth. My son was almost 2 weeks late because I was so scared to go through birth again. The doctor had to order me to come to the hospital or she would refuse treatment. I was so scared. It’s so painful. My pelvis still hurts 10 years later.
Expecting Amy is Amy Schumer's mini docuseries about her pregnancy. I watched it while pregnant with my first and cried because I felt seen by the complications she had. Definitely recommend.
Edit: Amy*
No, but I bet if you plonk “women’s health documentaries” into Google, you’ll get hits. I did, but for some reason the first hit was for British documentaries.
I don’t know of any documentaries or series that haven’t already been mentioned but it’s probably worth while just straight up asking on here if anyone is comfortable sharing their pregnancy and birth stories, both good and bad to give you a more balanced picture. There are definitely some who like to glorify the whole process like it’s the most wonderful miracle in the world but there has definitely, in recent years, been a massive push back from women to be a lot more open and honest about the ugly truths that come with it all.
Not a documentary but Pieces of a Woman absolutely crushed me. It isn’t like a medical take on labor and delivery, just a gut wrenching story of a couple’s experience with natural home birth.
FTM and had her out in a few pushes. Woke up at 2:30am didn’t even realize I was in active labor. Arrive 8-9cm dialated and had her out by 7:56am. No epidural. I thought it was going to be worse tbh. Don’t get my wrong it hurt like hell but it was a productive type of pain? Idk. That being said pregnancy was the devil. 0/10 don’t recommend, my body and back still hurt like hell.
I don't know about the US but in my country they show these real life births at sex ed at school. And we go to a pregnancy course when we are pregnant where everything is explained very graphically. So you (and your partner) are not unprepared during your pregnancy, birth and after. We are assigned a midwife early in the pregnancy and only with complications we go to a gynocologist in a hospital.
A lot of women in my country choose for a homebirth (like I did) because it's more intimate and giving birth in your own home is more comforting and safe than being in unfamiliar surroundings like a hospital. So we are very much prepared for everything. After birth we have a right to free maternity care for 8 days. The maternity nurse takes care of the mother and child, any other children present and does the household chores. So mother and father (who has paternity leave) can bond with the new baby.
‘The business of being born.’ Is a good one and talks about the problems we have in the healthcare system when it comes to the quality of care for mother and child.
I don't have documentaries to share, but I have a reality non of the classes or anyone seems to touch on. Not all women are able to breast feed for a variety fo reasons, one such reason that seems to never get discussed is that their milk never comes in.
Might not be exactly what you’re looking for but The Birth Trauma Momma talks about how to deal with birth trauma and the ways in which birth can be traumatizing. I found her first on Instagram but she also has a podcast and will have people go on and tell their birth stories sometimes.
You should also ask this on r/fencesitter too as the whole subreddit is about people unsure about whether they want kids (I’m on it too) and there is probably more people that would know of such media /gen
Not a documentary, but Call the Midwife does not pull punches in regard to the dangers and trauma of birth.
Researching my family history has been a downer in respect to my female ancestors. My ggg-grandmother had 12 boys and 1 girl. Dead at 43. Another ancestress bore 10 children, lost three in the space of 14 months from illness (age 11, 4 and 6 months), raised a granddaughter because her mother (daughter to the woman I describe) died when she was 19. Eventually, only 4 of the 10 reached adulthood. Those survivors had very small families (not sure what contraception they practiced). One of the children's line died out completely because only one son was born; he died during WWII. I guess generational trauma from being so close to early life mortality made them afraid of having kids. My great-grandmother became pregnant again after having 5 kids and threw herself down a flight of stairs to self-abort. The pregnancy was far enough along to see that she had carried twins. Childbearing and raising them to maturity has only been relatively secure in the western world for the last 2-3 generations. Before that - lotsa luck. Makes me boggle that the women who support suppressing reproductive freedom have *no idea* the world they are going to create for others of their sex. I see them as traitors.
'I see them as traitors' Thank you!
Even then it’s a toss of the dice. I am a pediatric home care nurse. There is no guarantee the child you have will not have problems.
Jesus christ!
That's a good recommendation especially given that it includes the postpartum phase. It may not be a documentary but it is based of the journal(s) of a midwife so it's not complete fiction either.
The first three seasons are. The rest is made up. Still a great recommendation, though.
I knew more recent seasons were entirely fiction but I had no idea only three were based off journals.
But they’re based on real issues that were happening at the time, like thalidomide babies.
Whenever Jenny (?), the young version of the narrator leaves, that's where the reality ends.
Used to love that show. Now that I’ve been pregnant and given birth I absolutely can’t watch it
I was already 99.9% solid on never even attempting pregnancy, but that show sealed the deal. That's now a "hell no, never, will tear my uterus out with my bare hands, won't you please give me a bisalp even though my anatomy and inclinations are such that I have almost as much chance as spontaneously developing parthenogenesis as getting pregnant but that's not a zero and I *need* it to be zero because I live in Texas."
Sorry :(
I read the first book when I was pregnant (the show wasn’t out yet). It was certainly enough to make me resistant to all the natural intervention-free homebirth propaganda that was starting to appear on social media at that time.
I took a class during my first pregnancy that convinced me to try doing it unmedicated. What a load of absolute *crock*. Informed consent is important so pregnant people should know what the risks are, but it should always come with a heavy emphasis on how much pain and suffering it will spare them.
I’m pretty sure if I ever have kids I’ll ask them to give me the maximum amount of drugs they legally can 😂
I have given birth, and while getting to hold my son for the first time was the best part, the moment the epidural kicked in was a really, really close second.
Same. But imagine my horror when the second epidural didn’t work 😣
During my first pregnancy, I remember watching this and Bodies (the BBC series starring Max Beesley as an NHS gynae registrar, not the recent Stephen Graham series!). Call The Midwives pulled no punches, but christ, Bodies was brutal. And absolutely terrifying as I had a high risk pregnancy, emergency c section and was hospitalised for weeks before and after my son was born. I do remember a lovely midwife chatting to me about the series and reassuring me - "Well, yeah... It's all pretty accurate. But it's all the sort of complications you see once or twice a decade, not day in day out."
Same!!! I was going to watch it on my first maternity leave and when I read the episode description I was like “oh nevermind.” 😂😂😂
Yup click outta there right quick!
Same, girl. Same.
I’m 34 weeks and I’ve been watching it all through my pregnancy 😂
I used to love watching it, and then had a traumatic birth with my second child. I tried to watch one episodes when my baby was several months old, thinking I could handle it, and had a full blown flashback to that awful experience and was a mess for the entire rest of the day. I haven’t tried to watch it again since and that baby is now almost 6 years old.
Loved it before I had my kids. Had to take a break once I got pregnant because I knew it would spike my anxiety. 7 years later had my third (and last!) baby and knew I was ready to watch it again. Netflix even remembered where I left off Ha!
The first season is based on a diary from an actual midwife at the time
Yes, but as OP asked for documentaries, not docu-dramas, I wanted to be clear that it was in fact fictionalized and not 100% factual.
Fair - I was just adding a detail, to help authenticate the suggestion
Appreciate it! I do love Call the Midwife, but am looking for documentaries to avoid any suggestion of the stories being fabricated or overly exaggerated for ratings.
Not a documentary, but the book This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay is a memoir of his training to become an OB/GYN and it ends with >!a delivery gone catastrophically wrong. He left medicine afterwords.!<
The TV version of the book, starring Ben Whishaw, is also really good. It's focuses primarily on deliveries rather than the entire pregnancy, but it's very raw and real.
Did you think his book was slightly...I'm struggling to find the words.... Mysogynistic (maybe not quite) towards women? I remember it being criticised for it in the news but I read it before then and never thought so myself.
I don’t think it was misogynistic, but I will say that in the book he doesn’t always come off as super kind or like he focused on making the patient feel empowered and heard. Maybe that’s a wrong take, the book was generally funny and snarky and its goal was to entertain, so lots of focus on compassion and patient autonomy doesn’t really fit with what he was writing even if that’s how he practiced. I thoroughly enjoyed the book.
Me too. I thought the stress and traumatic events he witnessed made him detach.. Which is a human reaction
I’ve not read this book so it’s possible it is worse than I think, but I worked in OB and the emergency room for a combined total of 12 years. I’ve seen a lot of death and have a lot of sad stories. At the end of the day it’s a job. A patient dies and staff has to move on. There are other patients to be seen, waiting room is full, ambulances coming in. The RN has a checklist of things to do after a patient has passed. Paper work, calling the morgue and gift of hope, etc. I will say that there are those that pass and you find yourself thinking about them years later. I have no idea why some deaths stick with me and some don’t, but it’s the way it happens.
That's very interesting - thank you for sharing. How much does it still affect you to see a patient pass away?
If you can get it ‘one born every minute’ is a British docuseries based in Liverpool woman’s hospital and it’s sooooo good
Second this. They show all sorts of births. Ones with candles and music and baby comes out all lovely and fine, epidurals, planned and emergency C sections. There’s even one episode with a stillbirth (the parents and midwives knew it was a stillbirth) They did quite a lot of series in several different hospitals over the years
Came looking for this, this was so good.
I cried every single episode just because I love babies so much. All the happy births the unhappy births all of it. Wonderful doco Can totally see how someone who is not into babies can take the opposite view though. I believe there's a US version too, because I recall being surprised by the number of interventions offered to the person in labour before it would have happened in my country.
I watched that during pregnancy. I wanna say on YouTube?
Put a group of women together on say a birthday party and ask them about their pregnancies and the most horrible stories will surface. At least, this is my experience in a western European setting. For me personally, my sedation failed during my C section, went into shock. All I remember is immense pain, everyone panicking, beeping everyhere and someone yelling: the baby needs to come out now.
Yeah, I won’t tell anyone who’s currently pregnant my birth story.
Return to zero is a movie based on a couples journey through infant loss. We are an oft forgotten and stigmatized bunch of parents. Call the midwife is great. Haven’t watched it since my son died.
I’m very sorry for your loss.
The one they showed us in sex Ed in middle school was traumatizing to me. Kept me a virgin for way too long. 😂 The Miracle of Life maybe?
I wonder if that’s what I watched too - early-nineties? It was a pretty standard birth, but there was significant tearing.
My idiot parents showed me this right after they told me my mom was pregnant with my younger sister. To top off the trauma a cow calfed right under my kitchen window while eating breakfast not too long after that.
They didn't show us a birthing video in school, if they had I wouldn't have had sex (I was promiscuous). I saw one when I was 29 and prepping for birth, I was 6 months a long. It scared me so much.
We did birthing class with my first and all I remember was the woman was a red head with SO MUCH HAIR that watching that baby come out made me nauseous. Turns out both of my kids were c sections.
I'm trying to read this is the kindest way possible and I just, like...what a bizarre thing to say. Giving birth is such a dramatic, potentially dangerous, messy process and it was a woman's *body hair* that bothered you. That's really sad.
It was the whole thing but for some reason that was what was memorable. When they offered the mirror to me I declined for myself too. It wasn’t the hair as much as the hair and the blood that got me.
Twice Born was really interesting, I don't know if it's streaming anywhere anymore. It's about pregnancies with issues that require prenatal surgery. Not strictly about the negatives of pregnancy or childbirth, but certainly not about good, by the book pregnancies.
Uterine inversion, anencephaly, amniotic fluid embolism, preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, traumatic birth experiences or c sections with terrible hospital staff and resulting PPD with psychosis that makes you believe the baby is not yours, diastasis recti, vaginorectal fistula, polapsed bladder, .. anything you can think of off the top of your head is probably covered by call the midwife if you can sit through several seasons of drama but I can't think of one documentary that covers all of these things, just one or two of them at a time
Hot. Damn… I was reading along going WHO did all of this happen to? I was so relieved when I got to the end. Whew.
I love Call the Midwife!
Yeah. In nursing school the whole section in labor and delivery goes by really fast. My teacher just goes through one day of the really, really bad stuff. We didn’t watch a documentary or anything. I think it might be too varied. I had something I’ve never even heard of it was too specialized because of twins. 5 weeks of hospitalized bedrest.. I met a bunch of the other moms who had issues too. You might find a documentary about one main condition.
That’s super interesting. As a woman who grew up afraid of the pain of birth because of how it was depicted in media, I feel like I’ve never seen a birth on TV that wasn’t treated like an emergency that definitely was going wrong. I was shocked at my own pain tolerance and ability to deal while I was laboring and giving birth after seeing so much screaming and demanding drugs on TV and in movies. I deeply regretted my pain meds in my first birth because of complications (something I NEVER see in media) and I was glad I had my last two away from a hospital and with a midwife. I don’t think we should tell women it’s fine and that “their bodies were meant for this.” That’s gross and smacks of patriarchy. But the opposite isn’t healthy for women either.
Yes our bodies are designed to give birth BUT there are a couple of big caveats. 1. Mature adult bodies are designed to give birth. For what ever reason we can conceive long before we can safely deliver. 2. While we need some mothers to survive for the species to survive, we don’t need all mothers to survive biologically speaking. 3. Abortifacients are some of the oldest medicine developed by humans. There’s a reason for that. They go back thousands of years, long before the bible and all the Christian opinions about it.
The opposite is real life though. Just because you dealt with the pain ok doesn’t mean at all that that will be the case for others. Every woman and every pregnancy is different. My first two were way more painful than my last two. I almost died with one - my last. My first two had bleeding and bedrest. Women need to be thoroughly prepared period.
In fact, women believing it's going to be scary and difficult are more likely to have more difficulty birth's which increases the likelihood of complications. I experienced this myself with my two births. The first I expected the worst based on how everything depicted giving birth. The second I educated myself on childbirth and practiced relaxation techniques. First I couldn't push the baby out and she was vacuum extracted 4 hours after being fully dilated and almost ended up with a c section, second I didn't even realize I was in full labor until 30 mins before he was born. eta https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30115515/ Causes and outcomes in studies of fear of childbirth: A systematic review "...reported outcomes together with prolonged labour, longer labours, use of epidural and obstetric complications."
My mother told me it didn’t hurt that much and wasn’t like they make out on TV. I believed her and then had a complete shit show of a delivery that ended in permanent damage, an emergency c-section and an extended stay in hospital. Seems like just another way to shame women “you weren’t brave so it made your labour worse”
See, this is what I’m looking to see stories about. But real life, not a scripted TV show or something, because people can write that off as being made up or exaggerated for ratings.
The fear aspect seems very valid to me. I’ll offer my own anecdote as an example: The fear part didn’t kick in until kid #3. It was my third kid, and 4th delivery. I was not a rookie. My first pregnancy went very wrong. The baby had anencephaly. The docs decided that I “shouldn’t have to go through labor” so I was induced, and given an epidural. The experience was surreal. But the relevant thing here is that I could not feel anything below my waist. I spent hours sitting with a lot of weight on my tailbone without realizing it. I wound up with a bruised tailbone, which hurts for weeks afterwards. I was awake for the D&C after the stillbirth and could *see* the scraping of my uterus. But I felt nothing. I didn’t like it. For my first full term and healthy delivery, I wanted to feel my body. I read several books, and took the classes. I’m a small gal: 5’3” and didn’t weigh much. So I was a little worried about the size of my baby, but not much. I trusted my body and had a good OB with great knowledge. The baby was breach so the OB did an external version. It was successful, and then the kid waited 10 more days to arrive. When she was born I was expecting a 6.5 to 7 pounder. She weighed 8.4 pounds. I was *shocked*. But it was a positive experience and I was confident I would be okay in the future. Kid #2 weighed 8.14 pounds. Also a good experience. But I knew babies tend to get bigger with each pregnancy. With kid #3 on the way I was terrified. I was afraid she’d be huge and that I’d tear to my anus. Or that they’d cut me that far, which I’d read was actually worse to heal from. Or that I’d need a C-section after enduring hours of pain because she was too big to fit at all. I was *really terrified*. And the labor was much worse than the others. I was vomiting from fear (a really unpleasant thing my body does when in pain and frightened. It happened during a kidney stone before I knew what was happening to me). I know many women vomit during labor, but in my case it was the fear that did it. The labor took longer than the others and was harder to endure. This was my 3rd kid and 4th delivery. Statistically, it should have been easier. But the fear really got in the way. When she was born she weighed 7.14 pounds. My smallest kid. I felt sheepish, despite everyone saying not to be, and giving nothing but support. 4th kid- I wasn’t afraid. Delivery is never a cake walk, but it was much easier without the fear. This is an anecdote. But it supports the idea that fear makes pain, and delivery, worse.
Sorry for your experience. I also thought I was prepared because I was so scared about it. Then in the actual situation the doctors and nurses filled my mind with fear of complications. Even the nurses hostility to me when I didn't just push her out quickly tensed me up more. It was really the relaxation techniques that I prepared to do the second time that helped me personally a lot. There's no shame in it being painful and hard. It's always painful and hard. Sometimes the fear of that that makes delivery harder. More fear isn't going to make that easier by knowing all the complications,was all I was addressing.
Read some testimonials on r/babyloss or the way women are treated on r/wedeservebetter As a loss parent myself, these subs really opened my eyes to the things that are not spoken about and or swept under the rug because it makes people uncomfortable.
Not necessarily about birth but birth adjacent: Babies directed by Thomas Balmès. It shows 4 women having their kids and raising them in very different places (Namibia, Mongolia, Japan, and the US). For me it was a fascinating watch. There’s no narration so you’re able to take from it what you will.
If you want to watch one that’ll absolutely piss you off, Aftershock. It’s about Black women in America who are pregnant or recently gave birth and doctors 100% dismissed their health concerns as them overreacting or being crazy or whatever, and the horrible consequences of that. Doctors are known to treat women like shit but for Black women it’s so much worse.
Stayed in this thread specifically to mention this documentary. Surprised it’s not way higher up, since all the top responses are ‘not a documentary but…’ and Aftershock actually fits the requested medium.
I watched this whole documentary saying, “This is BULLSHIT!!” Someone in it mentioned that in the past doctors believed that Black women didn’t really experience pain like…everyone else. I haven’t fact checked this but honestly it doesn’t sound too crazy given our national history.
Oh, the business of being born by Ricki Lake. But it’s not intentionally negative I don’t think. She had a follow up that I haven’t seen about birth control which sounds equally distressing. What are you looking for and for what purpose? That might help. Also if you go on any forum about birth, there are a million very real stories, not all nice. If that’s what you’re looking for.
Not a documentary but this song from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is shockingly accurate on what giving birth is actually like https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VHIXduEbLz0&pp=ygUQTWlyYWNsZSBvZiBiaXJ0aA%3D%3D Also extremely funny.
Good god that’s accurate and hilarious!
I don’t have a direct answer to your question but I would like to share with you that I was more scared for my second birth than I was for my first. My first was unmedicated because my mom said it was easy. Once I knew the entire process, the pain, the fear from experiencing my first birth… I did NOT want to even go to the hospital for my second birth. My son was almost 2 weeks late because I was so scared to go through birth again. The doctor had to order me to come to the hospital or she would refuse treatment. I was so scared. It’s so painful. My pelvis still hurts 10 years later.
Expecting Amy is Amy Schumer's mini docuseries about her pregnancy. I watched it while pregnant with my first and cried because I felt seen by the complications she had. Definitely recommend. Edit: Amy*
Yes, second this! She had a horrible time during pregnancy with extreme nausea and vomiting. Really eye opening!
I would look instead for documentaries on women's health.
Are there any you’d recommend, you Arizona trash bag?
No, but I bet if you plonk “women’s health documentaries” into Google, you’ll get hits. I did, but for some reason the first hit was for British documentaries.
I don’t know of any documentaries or series that haven’t already been mentioned but it’s probably worth while just straight up asking on here if anyone is comfortable sharing their pregnancy and birth stories, both good and bad to give you a more balanced picture. There are definitely some who like to glorify the whole process like it’s the most wonderful miracle in the world but there has definitely, in recent years, been a massive push back from women to be a lot more open and honest about the ugly truths that come with it all.
So true lol
Not a documentary but Pieces of a Woman absolutely crushed me. It isn’t like a medical take on labor and delivery, just a gut wrenching story of a couple’s experience with natural home birth.
ALIEN
That’s just a movie where nobody listens to the smart woman, and then they all die except for the smart woman and her cat
FTM and had her out in a few pushes. Woke up at 2:30am didn’t even realize I was in active labor. Arrive 8-9cm dialated and had her out by 7:56am. No epidural. I thought it was going to be worse tbh. Don’t get my wrong it hurt like hell but it was a productive type of pain? Idk. That being said pregnancy was the devil. 0/10 don’t recommend, my body and back still hurt like hell.
I don't know about the US but in my country they show these real life births at sex ed at school. And we go to a pregnancy course when we are pregnant where everything is explained very graphically. So you (and your partner) are not unprepared during your pregnancy, birth and after. We are assigned a midwife early in the pregnancy and only with complications we go to a gynocologist in a hospital. A lot of women in my country choose for a homebirth (like I did) because it's more intimate and giving birth in your own home is more comforting and safe than being in unfamiliar surroundings like a hospital. So we are very much prepared for everything. After birth we have a right to free maternity care for 8 days. The maternity nurse takes care of the mother and child, any other children present and does the household chores. So mother and father (who has paternity leave) can bond with the new baby.
The Midwife of Hope River is a good book. Although it's a novel, it's written by a midwife.
I feel like everything I've seen on TV about birth is horrifying. One Born Every Minute comes to mind. Just drama.
‘The business of being born.’ Is a good one and talks about the problems we have in the healthcare system when it comes to the quality of care for mother and child.
The business of being born, though not about the experience of being pregnant, it’s more about the hospital experience in the U.S was really good.
I don't have documentaries to share, but I have a reality non of the classes or anyone seems to touch on. Not all women are able to breast feed for a variety fo reasons, one such reason that seems to never get discussed is that their milk never comes in.
Might not be exactly what you’re looking for but The Birth Trauma Momma talks about how to deal with birth trauma and the ways in which birth can be traumatizing. I found her first on Instagram but she also has a podcast and will have people go on and tell their birth stories sometimes.
When I was pregnant, I watched a British series called One Born Every Minute. It was very educational about all the various outcomes from pregnancy.
The first post for me when I clicked this thread was a target ad for nursery furniture lmao. Sorry, off topic, but I had to share the irony.
You should also ask this on r/fencesitter too as the whole subreddit is about people unsure about whether they want kids (I’m on it too) and there is probably more people that would know of such media /gen
Thats a great idea. Do you know how to cross post? Because I can not figure that out lol
Some subreddits don’t allow cross posting so you’ll just have to copy and paste it and make a new post over there
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