Erykah Badu twitters while giving birth

I wrote that headline several minutes ago and still a faintly uncomfortable feeling wafts through my main functional channels.

Erykah Badu, one of the world's finest and most moving singers, is so in love with Twitter that, even in the latter stages of a home birth just a couple of days ago, she tweeted while she squeezed.

She began the morning on her blog, touchingly entitled 'fatbellybella' with the lovely greeting: "Morning, I'm in labor.' But when her fingers became otherwise engaged, she let her man, the rapper Jay Electronica, take over.

Alright, it was fairly innocuous stuff. For example: "Labor has begun. Everybody stand back. No hospitals. No doctors. No medicine. We're waiting for the midwife to show."

But all I take from that is the phrase "everybody stand back." Will that be Erykah's new album? Will it be infused with soulful baby gurglings? Why should we stand back? Were there more intimate descriptions to come?

Yes, there were. Jay detailed the breaking of the waters and the depth of the dilations. Please, I want to be deeply involved in every new phenomenon. And I know that every one of Erykah's 4,500 followers was positively drinking in her breaking waters.

This is an Erykah Badu concert in Tel Aviv. I do not believe the image on the screen is from a home birth.

(Credit: CC Ray V Tal)

But if one becomes an object of twitterdom, how much is it polite to reveal?

Ought one tweet one's visits to the latrine? One's less than legal thoughts when a cyclist goes through a stop sign? One's methods of disposing of boogers? One's feelings about certain brands of underwear being luckier than others?

Has anyone at Twitter created a charter for this? Guidance is surely needed...before the FCC gets involved. (Anyone know if Janet Jackson is a twitterer?)

Erykah herself seems to have a strong handle on her Twitter decorum: anything goes. She has, allegedly, created a permanent living and breathing monument to Twitter by naming the newborn Twitty Milk.

You may think she is joking. However, her first two kids are called Seven Sirius (fathered by Andre 3000 from Outkast) and Puma Sabti (fathered by rapper D.O.C).

[mrcjacobs]

She is certifiably mentally ill!

[ChrisMatyszczyk]

Oh, come now, mrcjacobs.

Surely you know people far more, um, clinically eccentric than Erykah?

Chris

[mDotAlmighty]

Would it have killed you to link to her twitter page?

[ChrisMatyszczyk]

Yes, mDotAlmighty, yes, it would.

Chris

[mexic0]

OK, so it's ok for an unborn baby to have a twitter account (per your article: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10150781-71.html) so it can twitter every in-womb motion to its follower, but not ok for the mom to twitter its actual birth?

[ChrisMatyszczyk]

Well, I'm not sure I was entirely complimentary about the unborn baby thing, either, Mexic0. This Twittering thing seems very strange to me.

I don't know if you're a boy or a girl, but I can't imagine being in the midst of the childbirth thing- something of a messy and uncomfortable experience- and wanting to communicate with 4500 people about it...

How about you?

Thank you for commenting.

Chris

[xcal78]

I agree with Chris. The last thing I'd want to do is play on the internet let alone tell the world what's happening in details. I guess since she's semi-well known it was a PR move? It did get Chris to write a story on it and us to talk about it.

[Dalkorian]

Three kids, three different fathers. Says something about this girls morals, or lack thereof, doesn't it? So why act surprised when she decides to turn child birth into some weird text exhibitionist thing?

[xcal78]

"Anyone know if Janet Jackson is a twitterer?"

I bet she was till she has a texting malfunction and they ban her account.