Weekend Movie: "A Baby Story ". Yes, the TLC show. Yes, really.

At long, long last, it's finally viewable online: the episode featuring (gasp) a home birth with (squee) Amy Romano, midwife extraordinaire, writer for Science and Sensibility and Rh Reality Check, and all around righteous babe. Not to mention her eminent colleague and partner Vicki Marnin. It takes skills far greater than I possess to be able to embed this kind of video, but just click here to view on the Birth & Beyond site. Ignore the silly, overwrought intro and enjoy.

This was great to see, and I thank TLC for broadening beyond their standard issue cascade-of-intervention fare. Also of note on the same page (belonging to Romano's past practice, Birth and Beyond) is a wonderful slide show of another mother's home birth. I've seen some truly lovely ones, and this is right up there with the best of them. The photographer (Mellissa DeMille of SmileBaby Photography) does a wonderful job of telling the entire story - it's amazing to see just how much narrative detail you get.


True story: I came THIS CLOSE to going with Birth and Beyond for my own birth - though I didn't know who Amy was at the time, I lived in Connecticut during my pregnancy and for the first 7 months of Lily's life. I did a consultation with Vicki, really liked her, and was completely torn between them and midwives I eventually went with, Nancy Farr and her apprentice Gengi Proteau. It just came down to distance - Birth and Beyond was just too far from my area to be practical for prenatal visits. Two roads diverged in a wood . . . Of course I completely adored Nancy and Gengi, but it's always interesting so see those crossroads in retrospect.