A teacher in Minnesota has decided to share her baby’s birth with the world via the Internet. Many soon-to-be moms blog about their pregnancies and about their delivery experience once it’s over. On Saturday, November 7, this mom shared it all live, and even chatting live, during the delivery of her first baby.
Is this a modern day way to share a special moment with friends, or have we turned into a society that has blurred the lines between the private and the public aspects of our lives?
“For many people, it’s one of life’s most intimate moments. But for a 23-year-old Minnesota teacher, the birth of her first child will be an event open to anyone in the world.”
Her name is Lynsee (and his keeping her last name private). She is a blogging mom-to-be from the social network MomsLikeMe. She has about one thousand online readers. So, there’s a good chance that almost 1,000 women may have watched the whole thing online.
When asked why she decided to go public with the birth itself, Lynsee responded confidently:
“We wanted to share this experience. If I were in a classroom, I’d be teaching about development. It was a way for me to teach… A way for me to use myself as a textbook.”
She has called her posts a “tell-all blog,” where she doesn’t keep much about her pregnancy private. So, giving birth live and online seems to be a natural progression of what she has already been doing. Initially, her husband was wary about the idea but was convinced by the website hosting the event that the video would be done tastefully. Now the whole family was on board for the big day. So, on Saturday, two cameramen were in the hospital room with Lynsee. Her husband and midwife were also there for the delivery. Cameramen were instructed to avoid taking any graphic pictures. So, there were no full body shots of Lynsee but they definitely captured the birth of her baby girl.
Not everyone thinks this is as “norma”‘ as Lynsee makes it appear. Another mom, Kim, who blogs for Families.com, is not convinced this is for everyone:
“I saw this as kind of like a door into a new era of sharing personal events. Birth has always been such private thing. We’ve seen it move from the home into the hospital. Now to see it move on to the Internet is pretty incredible.”
Another mom was shocked at the idea. Julie Taylor, senior editorial producer for Los Angeles-based MomLogic.com and mother of two, said, “Wow! I would never do that.” However, she also said that younger moms have gotten accustomed to a very different technological culture, where they share all things private with a community of online “friends.” So, sharing the most intimate of moments could be a natural progression of the culture.
“They’ve lived more of their lives online. For them, they’ve video-taped most of their lives anyway and they’ve grown up on reality TV. So maybe it’s an old-fashioned notion to think twice.”
So, it appears that sharing the most intimate of moments could be a natural progression of the culture. Whether or not that’s a good thing is to be debated.
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