Posted on 05/01/2009 2:23:00 AM PDT by nickcarraway
In what is claimed to be the world's first, a 28-year-old man has helped his wife deliver a baby successfully with online assistance from a popular video- sharing site.
Marc Stephens delivered his baby son after watching Do It Yourself baby birth video clips on YouTube on March 21, The Daily Telegraph reported.
The naval engineer, who already has three children with his wife Jo, also 28, decided to search the internet as she felt some discomfort. Four hours later, when Jo went into sudden labour and the couple was told by hospital staff that no midwife was available, he used his new-found knowledge.
Stephens, who has also learned how to play the guitar and do a Rubik's cube from YouTube videos, decided to check out the video-sharing site's childbirth tips. Amongst the videos he viewed, one was entitled "How to Deliver a Baby in a Taxi Cab".
"I spent about half-an-hour on Google and watched a couple of videos on YouTube. One was a cheesy American video on 'this is how you give birth. In reality it didn't actually go into that much detail when she was talking. It only lasted a couple of minutes, " he said.
The happy news is the baby is healthy: all the red squares are on the same side!
Youtube? There are books and books, there’s so much info on the internet, but youtube? Eh, maybe he’s a visual learner.
My wife and I delivered our last several at home confidently from what we learned by reading. Congrats to this guy and his wife and child and guitar and rubiks cube.
That’s really awesome and really lucky.
I’m all for natural births and they are great for those who want them, but the reason infant and mother mortality rates are so low is because if there is something going wrong, THERE ARE DOCTORS THERE!
Had I had my daughter at home, we’d both be dead.
I’m thinking this man anticipated that he would have to deliver his child, not that he had necessarily wanted to deliver the baby.
“Four hours later, when Jo went into sudden labour and the couple was told by hospital staff that no midwife was available, he used his new-found knowledge.”
It seems that they had tried to obtain trained medical care for her at some point but were told that no one was available. It is beyond me why a hospital would not have any midwifery staff available to handle even uncomplicated deliveries, since babies haven’t yet learned about normal business hours. However this did occur in the UK, land of socialized medicine. It very well may be that, when his wife started feeling contractions, he began his research after anticipating a situation and wanting to be prepared for it.
That all being said, this man, as well as his wife and baby, are very lucky that the delivery went smoothly. An uncomplicated delivery is not hard to perform, as a baby in the proper position doesn’t need much help. In truth, the hardest thing about most deliveries is making sure the mother’s perineum doesn’t tear, since that actually is affected by the performance of the person doing the delivery. However, there is no way to learn how to handle the numerous problems that can occur during delivery after watching YouTube for an hour.
The essence of this story isn’t the wonderfulness of home births. It is the failure of socialized medicine (coming soon to a maternity ward near you, if Barack Obama has his way) to provide people with even the most basic of medical care.
However this did occur in the UK, land of socialized medicine
the couple was told by hospital staff that no midwife was available
enough said
But is it in tune?
...
The naval engineer...,
The NAVEL Engineer!
I thought those things pretty much built themselves.
"The videos were pretty self-explanatory, but I had a real h*ll of a time flagging a cab before the baby came."
Instead of slapping the baby, he put a capo on it.
When he cut the umbilical cord, he referred to it as playing, "unplugged."
“However this did occur in the UK, land of socialized medicine”
Once Barack’s universal healthcare kicks in I hope the folks at youtube might be able to post some “do-it-yourself” knee and hip replacement.
“Honey, can you replace the power clip in the craftsman and get me Grammy’s latest vitals ~ I think I’m ready to start cuttin’”
you desrve one, too.
the capo was a nice touch, but it won’t be funny when we’re actually doing that on this side of the pond.
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