A short one.

A mother giving birth to her offspring is a very special and wondrous occasion – whether it is a human birth or one of the planets or many other wonderful species. Thereby I do not imply that the alternative reproduction methods of creatures like Amoeba - which simply split into manifold versions of themselves – or birds and reptiles - which reproduce by means of laying eggs - are any less wondrous. However, the process whereby a mother gives birth to a living, breathing baby seems to inspire the most awe with people.

Yet, to me the process of giving birth has always seemed to be a rather private affair; an intimate event especially between mother and the baby being born, as well as the husband and possibly the medical staff that are in assistance. The triumph of life entering the world, experienced and observed by a handful of entangled souls.

I could never understand why the depiction of the birthing process in movies and documentaries always left me with an uneasy feeling of disgust and a good degree of repulsion. Recent years has allowed me to think about my own unexplainable reaction that caused a good deal, of guilty feelings. Why would something so wonderful make me feel so uneasy.

Recently, it dawned on me that it is not the birthing process itself that I don't like, but the manner in which we, the spectators, are visually and aurally introduced to the process of a mother in her last moments of giving birth to her young. After the compulsory scenes of the mother's discomfort with the physical symptoms of a pregnancy reaching its term, the scene often shifts to the where the mother is rushed to an emergency room – panic, fear, flashes of the mother in pain, father in panic, medical personal shouting orders. The latter scene is not obligatory and may be skipped to where the mother is in labour. Usually much time is spent on the mothers suffering during the birthing process: nurses instructing on breathing, fear on the face of husbands, mother periodically and repeatedly in extreme pain caused by contractions and the descend of the baby. Screams, shouts, huffing and puffing, instructions, fear, the occasional threat of something possibly going wrong, flashings scenes, until, eventually, after an extended period of traumatisms, the baby is born. Unless it is an alien Sci-fi movie, the doctor (or alternatively, the father, policeman, midwife or other assorted deliverers), shouts: "It is a healthy baby boy/girl" and holds aloft a screaming bloodied baby (I believe in the movies it is usually a rubber replica.) The camera quickly shifts back to the face of the exhausted mother, smiling faintly with exhausted relief... the extended and detailed orgy of terror, pain, blood and emotions has come to an end.

Of course the purpose of the demonstration was not to depict the beauty of life but to elicit and instil fear, the food on which some thrive.

Now I know...