Lights, camera, childbirth!

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

You wonder exactly what combination of words is used to get a woman to agree to give birth on national television. Something like: "We'll stick with soft lighting. We'll shoot you from your best side," or: "No, no, no, you are definitely not fat and swollen. You have never looked lovelier."

Could it be a rush of hormones that overloads the natural circuitry of the brain, that makes a woman actually nod and smile and say: "Sure! Why not film the birth? Bring in a television crew. Set up the lights! Broadcast my naked body into every house in America! I don't mind at all!" Instead of, "What, are you out of your *$ ##! mind?"

Does a pregnant woman hear the words "television" and "cameras" and skip past everything she's seen in birthing tapes and on "The Baby Story" to some G-rated fantasy of herself sitting up in bed, every hair in place, a beatific smile on her lips, sanguinely bringing forth life?

The reality, of course, is more like a scene from "The Exorcist." Women with the sunniest of dispositions have been known to suddenly spew out words they didn't even know they knew, froth at the mouth and rattle the bed.

Maybe childbirth has changed since I had my kids. Maybe it's Childbirth Light these days. It must be or how else could "Good Morning America" have found not one but two expectant mothers to agree to have their deliveries filmed? Birthing rooms, I know, are different than those clinical old operating rooms. They are real bedrooms with fabric and music and soft lights. And there's way more participation in the birth process than there used to be. No more saying to fathers or sisters or neighbors or friends. "Have a seat in the waiting room and we'll tell you when it's over."

Customs surrounding childbirth have changed. But the process itself?

Call me unimaginative, but I can't quite figure out how this could have changed.

My best friend Rose, always an innovator, was the first human being I knew who actually wanted to be photographed during childbirth. She insisted her husband forget about feeding her ice chips and massaging her belly and concentrate instead on the camera settings. "What's the shutter speed, Richard?" "Open the lens." "Stop talking to me and take the pictures!" she shouted between contractions.

Husbands were rare in delivery rooms back in 1970. Husbands with cameras didn't exist. Richard was a forerunner, too.

Rose carried those pictures around with her for the longest time. "Wow!" I said when she showed them. "Interesting," my mother said. "Very interesting."

"We think this is a wonderful opportunity to shine the national spotlight on our worldwide obstetrics service," Beth Israel spokesman Bill Schaller told the Herald this week. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas and Methodist Hospital in Houston will be the featured hospitals in the two-hour slot on "Good Morning America" next Tuesday. But it will be at Beth Israel that the birth, if things go according to plan, takes place. "You have to remember that babies come into the world on their own schedule," Schaller added.

Barry Morris, who gave birth to her son Tyler a few months ago, was a patient at Beth Israel and was approached by "Good Morning America" during one of her scheduled check-ups. "They were interviewing my doctor and the nurse asked me if I wanted to be interviewed. I said OK and then this team came in and asked me some things about my pregnancy, like how I was doing and then they said, 'How would you feel about having your delivery filmed?'

"At first I thought, wow, I could be on TV. My husband thought it was cool and my mother did, too. But then I thought about how this is the worst I've looked in my life and how really I'd looked a lot better. And no one wanted me to be on TV then. So I said no. And, you know what? I'm glad I did."