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It’s had 700,000 views and counting on YouTube. No, not Michelle Obama’s galvanising speech at the Democratic National Convention, but a video of a Canadian blogger’s home birth.
And it’s hardly surprising with the headline: INCREDIBLE HOME BIRTH VLOG!!! LABOUR & DELIVERY (UNASSISTED UNMEDICATED!! BY HERSELF!!!) that it’s raking in the views.
But the video surpassed anything I had imagined. Far from the cliche hippy whale music home birth scene, Legaci Allong, a young mother, 24, is fully made up, interacting with her family throughout and seems to be well informed and in control. We see her labour progress as she smiles through contraction after contraction, chatting and making smoothies throughout the process of dilation. She makes it look easy.
I had my first child last year and, like Legaci, was keen to embrace the natural birthing ethos. I joined hypnobirthing classes to focus my mind and control my breathing during contractions. It helped, but I was still hunched up like a gremlin making farmyard animal noises.
Legaci has vlogged about her life for the past four years, giving her thousands of followers a front row seat to witness the joys and sorrows of family life, including a heartbreaking miscarriage. She is skilled at performing in front of the camera and at no point does her performance slip in this vlog. It’s unbelievably impressive, and perhaps a little unnerving, that she has so much focus on the video rather than what her body is doing.
As her labour progresses, Lagaci talks about positive mindset and visualisation that produce the ‘happy hormone’ oxytocin, which is what brings on labour. Mothers are often sent home by the hospital when not sufficiently dilated, instructed to watch their favourite movie and eat chocolate. (Didn’t have to tell me twice). But Legaci, takes this to new levels with affirmations to mentally stimulate her positivity.
Her theory is based on ridding herself of MBP, ‘Media Birth Perception’, dispelling the all-too-common media images of the screaming woman lying on her back in stirrups surrounded by doctors and swearing at her husband. Instead, she uses calm imagery in her head, prepares her body with the right nutrients and believes that you need to educate yourself to rid your mind of the fear, that you can create a positive mindset during labour. Sounds lovely. And watching her give birth in the bath with just two pushes, surrounded by her family and no blood and gore in sight, is really quite lovely.
The problem is that Legaci talks about birth plans. It’s something every mother-to-be will be familiar with. Most hospitals encourage you to make one, dictating whether or not you would like pain relief and other nuances of the birthing process. The reality is that so many births do not go to plan – around a third of births in the UK end up in an emergency C section. So is making a plan to have a positive and natural experience setting yourself up to fail?
I also have to question her single-mindedness about not wanting her family to call a midwife in time for the birth. Is this actually just irresponsible, putting her child’s and own life at risk if something should go wrong? She is a person of influence. Her actions could well encourage others to copy which could cause, at best, unrealistic expectations, at worst, a dangerous situation for mother and child.
That said, dispelling the negative associations with birthing can only be a good thing. I just hope that mums-to-be seek professional advice before going down this route.
