Currently running on channel 4 - Tuesdays 9pm
This series follows the highs and lows of childbirth, filmed in the Princess Anne Maternity hospital. Obviously not for the faint hearted but at times hilariously funny.......
First EpisodeOne Born Every Minute, Channel 4's new
fly-on-the-delivery-room-wall series, began with a long, sustained
bellow of protest. I did wonder whether this might be translated as "Get
that bloody fly out of here" – the transitional stages of labour not
being famous for their tranquillising effect – but apparently everybody
here had signed off on having this intimate moment shared with a
television audience. And in the case of Steve and Tracy, waiting for
their fourth child, it did occur to you that Tracy might simply have
wanted an independent record of Steve's gormlessness as a partner. A
policeman of 41, with a mental age of 12, Steve saw this as the perfect
moment for larking around. As Tracy moaned in pain and called for the
gas and air, he put on a mincing voice and reminded her of her birth
plan: "I'm going to do it all naturally."
The baby had been something of an afterthought.
First, Steve had had to go and have his vasectomy reversed and then,
when nothing happened, Tracy discovered she needed an operation for an
ovarian polyp. After that, when she still didn't get pregnant, she'd
begged for one round of IVF, which had fortunately proved successful.
"It was obviously meant to be," said Tracy, without a trace of irony in
her voice. Now, though, she had the double whammy of labour pains and
Steve's dubious sense of humour. She handled the latter with startling
forbearance. Steve thought she was being "nobby and aggressive" when she
asked him (quite mildly) to stop patting her back with an inflated
surgical glove. I thought he was lucky that she didn't bite him.
Down the corridor, Lisa was still absorbing the
fact that her baby was on its way 11 days early. "I haven't washed the
cot blankets," she said suddenly, interrupting an inventory of parental
anxieties that stretched so far into the future that it even
encompassed whether her unborn's son's unborn children would look after
him in his old age. Tracy, meanwhile, was squeezing in a quick pee
between contractions, unaware that Steve had tip-toed across the room
and was trying to unlock the bathroom door with a coin, to reveal her in
flagrante.
You can catch up here.........
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/one-born-every-minute/4odThere's not been an episode yet where I didn't cry!