Sidelines Audio/Video Recordings
Someday I’d like to venture into birth videography, but at this time, I have other priorities for my professional development and education. I’d been on the fence at the beginning of 2025 as to whether I’d like to pursue becoming a Student Midwife and Doula, or exploring videography. And it feels like the universe is gently nudging me in the midwife and doula direction.
But if you hire me as your photographer, or if I’m attending your birth as a Birth Assistant or Student Midwife, one of the things I’ll offer to you is to set my phone up on the side of the room, somewhere hopefully not in the way (and hopefully not in direct view of you crowning if we can possibly avoid it - unless you ask me to!) using a very small tripod. And I can start a recording when baby is near crowning, to record the birth, either as a video or an audio recording. I typically let it continue recording through the first 10 or so minutes of baby’s life, and will edit it down to a much smaller file later, so you can replay your baby’s first cries anytime you’re thinking back on your birth.
This is something I really wish I’d had for my son’s birth, but his delivery was a bit scary, and it was the furthest thing from my mind as I was having conversations with providers about vacuum/forceps assistance while my OBGYN had his feet up vertically on the hospital bed, hands on top of my belly, literally pulling against my belly trying to pop my son out. I don’t have any good photos of myself from that delivery, and it makes me sad. We couldn’t afford a photographer or videographer, and I just accepted that it was an experience there wouldn’t be much documentation of.
With my daughters births, I wasn’t interested in trying to set up a video somewhere, but I opened the Voice Memos app on my phone, and I recorded their deliveries. It’s incredible to be able to open this app on my phone and listen to their first cries anytime I like. And for their deliveries, unlike my oldest that took about 40 minutes of pushing and many contractions, my girls both came out in one contraction. I was in complete shock when my middle child was born, and went back to time it. 37 seconds from first push to her body being out, according to the voice memo! And my youngest was delivered in 60 seconds.
Voice Memos transcription of the recording of my middle child’s birth. The transcription begins part way through counting to 10 while I push through a contraction, my OBGYN stating that her head was out, and then the rest of her body was out, in a total of 3 pushes.
The thing I like about these audio recordings is that the app has been updated to transcribe the voice memo, which is great when you want to try and find a specific thing someone said at a later time. This could actually be a great tool for providers to use during births just to be able to more accurately recall details at a later time for more accurate charting - how much blood loss they noticed, the exact time a concerning symptom was noticed, baby’s APGAR scores, and even things like how a resuscitation was handled if baby came out and needed a little help. It could also be helpful to peer review with other providers, which is a very important process for any birth with an adverse outcome, so other providers can give their advice about how things could have been handled differently, which things went well, and provide emotional support to each other as they process secondary trauma.
I am lucky that I haven’t attended any particularly traumatic births, but it’s inevitable as a birth worker of any kind. If you have a traumatic birth, a recording of your birth may be able to help you process these traumatic events at a later time with a therapist when you’re ready, and process complex emotions connected to your grief, trauma, resentment, and fear. Birth floods our brains with significant amounts of hormones that make it more difficult to recall details with a high degree of certainty, and this can lead to our internal narrative of what exactly happened becoming inaccurate or heightened in various ways.
I sincerely hope to never witness any kind of provider malpractice or mistake which would warrant reporting the provider to the state licensing board, but I’d imagine recordings would be extraordinarily helpful to that investigation, as they debrief how the delivery went, how the provider was analyzing the situation, whether they took the appropriate next steps as needed, and whether they made any significant mistakes that need to be addressed, including potential suspension of a provider’s license.
I do not charge clients for these recordings, because I don’t process them at all beyond trimming the file down to make it small enough to save to your smartphone. Each of my clients for whom I’ve recorded the birth receives a copy of this file in your finished digital album.
