Who would you put on your Birth List?

By REBECCA SPARROW

“Take someone you trust, your mother, your sister, your best friend. Someone who’s had children, who knows that place. If they have healthcare experience, all the better. But trust matters more than this.”

That bit of sublime wisdom isn’t from me. It’s from novelist and author of the brilliant non-fiction book Birth Wars, Mary-Rose Maccoll on who she believes you should choose to have in the delivery room with you when you give birth.

“When researching Birth Wars I spoke to so many women who were so frightened and alone in labour despite their partners being there beside them – birth is a big deal for partners too so it’s a big ask for them to look after a birthing woman as well – and having someone who really cares about you and focuses only on that seems to make a difference … But for me, with my experience of a first baby and my fears, I really needed a woman who’d given birth beside me, and one I could trust with my life.”

(Thank God for Mary-Rose because my advice about giving birth would’ve been more along the lines of, ‘You will suddenly find yourself falling in love with your anaesthetist’ quickly followed by ‘Don’t be afraid to order two desserts off the menu for dinner. They’ll totally give them to you.’)

Regardless of whether your babies were delivered through the sun roof (technical term) or out of your hoo-ha (technical term), it doesn’t matter.  It’s still a time, a moment, when the whole world stops and life is changed through the arrival of a new little being.

And here’s the bit where I casually segue into two celebrity birth stories from this week. The first was Kate Hudson’s. In a very candid interview with Ellen this week, she went into (a lot) of detail about the birth of her son Bing and the antics of her mother Goldie, who was in the delivery room for his arrival.

She described it like “a Woody Allen film”. Take a look:

Hop on over to iVillage.com.au for 5 other things you didn’t know about Kate Hudson’s birth.

In other news, there’s the photos of Kourtney Kardashian’s birth. The graphic photos of Kourtney Kardashian’s birth. While her family looked on, the 33-year-old actually reached down and pulled her baby Penelope out with her own hands.

You can see all the photos at iVillage.com.au. And here’s the video:

Who would you or did you have in the delivery room with you when you gave birth?