This is the moment when a live stream will become a love stream.
A 23-year-old teacher from Minnesota named Lynsee, who is withholding her last name to preserve her anonymity, has decided not to withhold your fascination with every moment of the birth of her first child.
She has chosen to broadcast what some would describe as the most personal moment of their lives. Yes, you can watch her first born emerge into this vibrant but confused world. Live on MomsLikeMe.com.
Some will feel this is media exposure gone beyond the bounds of filmic exposition. But Lynsee, who has already been describing her pregnancy in some considerable detail to her more than 1,300 followers on the site, is adamant that this will be an educational experience.
She told ABCNews.com: "If I were in a classroom, I'd be teaching about development. It was a way for me to teach...A way for me to use myself as a textbook."
When it comes to childbirth, there can never be too much education.
(Credit: CC Brainware3000/Flickr)I know that those of a more technical, or indeed, merely curious bent, will be wondering about some of the details surrounding this made-for-TV spectacular.
Well, her husband, Anders, will be with her. As will her mom. Look, please don't ask me about these conventions. But does one really need one's mom in there? Perhaps, one supposes, if she's a nice lady.
Gosh, I almost forgot the cameraman. Yes, he will be in the birthing room, as will a second camera, delicately positioned in the corner to capture alternative views.
Strangely, though, Lynsee told ABCNews.com that there will not be any "graphic" over-the-midwife's-shoulder shots. Some might feel that if the point of the video truly is education, then it should enlighten rather than conceal.
However, I am sure that this live-stream no-pay-per-view event, which ought to occur in the next few days, can serve a positive purpose.
There will be those who might wonder, after the sublime experience of participating in Erykah Badu giving birth on Twitter, whether they might be able to communicate with Lynsee while she is enjoying her starring educational role.
Well, if you register with MomsLikeMe.com, you will, oh, goody, be able to live chat with Lynsee while her baby swims down the river of life into the world.
Perhaps this streaming will be the beginning of a trend, one that might provide a new revenue stream for the many cameramen who have been idle in this vicious recession.
Perhaps there will soon be birthing cumbayas, where friends of the parents from around the world can watch, while advising and cheering on via live chat. Filmmakers might join in too: "Turn a little to the left Lynsee! Bit more! The camera loves your left profile, darling! Oops, hold on there little one! Not Yet! Just one more shot of Mom! OK, cue the baby!"
Ours, you see, is a developing civilization.
When you've already used YouTube videos to learn to solve the Rubik's Cube and play the guitar, you might think that learning to do anything else would be fairly simple.
Delivering a baby, for example.
Marc Stephens, a naval engineer from Cornwall, England, and an afficionado of YouTube learning, thought it might be instructive or, who knows, fun, to check out the child-birthing thing on the site as his wife Jo was feeling a few tweaks in her innards.
So there he was at 10:30 p.m., watching where to put your hands, when to pull, how to twist. Oh, you surely don't expect me to watch one of these things, do you? I can tell you that one of the videos was called "How to Deliver a Baby in a Taxicab."
Well, this seems to be a child-birthing class. I wonder if there's a YouTube video.
(Credit: CC NateOne/Flickr)Anyway, four hours later, Jo went into labor.
They were planning on a home birth, but Marc called the hospital and asked for one of the actresses out of the YouTube movie. You know, the one who played the nurse.
No, in truth, there were no midwives available to come to the house, and Jo had a habit of laboring with efficient speed (they already had three children).
Indeed, she suddenly popped out of the bathroom, went down on all fours and was ready to go.
So, Marc thought: "OK. If I can move the yellow square to the left and those two blue squares to the right...no, wait, that's the Rubik's YouTube video."
Remarkably, he thought about the taxicab video and kept his head while he held the baby's.
"My youngest daughter woke up and was standing right behind me watching the whole thing!" he told the Telegraph.
To which Jo added: "I wasn't panicking at all. I have to say, out of all my four labors, that was the one I enjoyed the most."
I wasn't entirely aware this childbirth thing could be enjoyable.
Just as I wasn't entirely aware that YouTube was more than a place where you could see people putting their heads inside a balloon and then trying to blow it up.
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).
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