Bringing Baby Home: The Ultimate Baby Care DVD (2005) Review

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(More customer reviews)This newborn care DVD is strictly for caring for a newborn infant, in other words, what you learn here won't apply after the first 3 or 4 weeks. My biggest beef with this DVD is that it totally just skims over all the basics, such as how to breastfeed properly, how to bottlefeed properly, how to swaddle properly, how to calm a baby properly, etc. All the stuff you want to know about looking after a newborn, each is given about 5 seconds of screen time. Instead, the bulk of the program is wasted on things like "pre-birth preparation," which interestingly appears toward the end of the program, and how the mother should take care of herself. These are important things to know, but not for a "ultimate baby care DVD."
The DVD packaging is also very misleading. It says "over an hour of hints"... but that includes 1 minute of copyright warning and another 30 seconds of "you should always consult your doctor" warning, plus a long end-of-program credit. The actual content is about 55 minutes.
I've seen this DVD and the "ABC of Newborn Baby Care" DVD and even though the latter is not great, it's better because it goes through the important topics step-by-step, and the nurse/midwife demonstrates the techniques clearly. Between the two DVDs, I definitely recommend the latter.
BTW, you can likely find this at your local library. It's also available from Netflix. It's just not worth the price of the DVD, not even 1/10 of the price.

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Bringing Baby Home is the ultimate how-to baby care DVD. Featuring over 100 topics, the DVD combines expert advice, step-by-step demonstrations and lots of mom-tested tips.Winner of a prestigious 2005 Parents' Choice Approved Award, the DVD deals with four themes: the basics, feeding, hygiene and sleep and coping. Like a prenatal class on DVD. Great for dads who don't want to read books on baby care. The DVD features real newborns, parents and baby care experts - no actors!

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The Business of Being Born (2008) Review

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(More customer reviews)The film does a good job of explaining the "intervention cycle" that is so common in medicalized births--the mother is hooked up to intravenous tubes and all sorts of technology, and thus there is inevitable pressure to use (or misuse that technology). Anesthetics, which are supposed to ease the pain, lead to slowdown in the birth process, which leads to more intervention (pitocin etc.) and oftentimes to "crisis" into which the physician steps to save the day. The film gives a fair amount of attention to the power of the physician over against the mother in medicalized birth. The portrayal of the respectful and extremely helpful manner in which home birth midwives work comes across very well.
We give the film a four-star rating instead of five for several reasons. We think it does not do quite well enough at explaining the reasons why home birthers do certain things--for example, why they often choose water birth. Why husbands/partners might not wear a shirt when assisting the mother. Why the home setting is generally superior to the hospital setting in terms of exposure to dangerous microbes. There are good reasons for all these things, but they're not really explained in the film.
We think the film dwells excessively on the experiences of the director (Cara) and upon Ricki Lake. It's fine to have these folks profiled in the film we just think they take too much screen time that could have been better used educate people further about non-medicalized birth. This is one reason that the film starts to languish a bit in the second half. Some of the language used on the film (casual swearing) will be unnecessarily offensive to many home birthers and potential home birthers. The film did not mention the religious reasons some people choose home birth (we'd have loved to see interviews with Amish home birthers, for example). We did think the contributions of Michael Odent, Ina Gaskin, and the other midwives (and the back-up doctor) were portrayed very well.
We have had six home births (four with well-trained midwives). Our midwives definitely went the extra mile for us, and were genuinely interested not only in "getting the baby out" but in all aspects of prenatal, delivery, and early infant care. They were extremely generous in their time and expertise. In terms of theoretical and practical knowledge, our trained midwives were the equal if not superior to the typical birth-attending physician. This perspective comes across pretty well on the film.
All in all, this is a good film. It could be quite a bit better in terms of explaining non-medicalized birth to people who are unfamiliar with it. But it's a good start and we recommend it to anyone interested in the topic.

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BUSINESS OF BEING BORN - DVD Movie

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National Geographic - In the Womb (2005) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)We have 4 kids and have another one on the way. The kids had some questions that covered a broad range. (what does the baby look like now to how will it come out) We sat all four of them down (ages 3 to 11) in front of it. They all enjoyed it and got their questions answered better than we had answered them. Good Show from National Geographic - 5 stars

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From the moment of conception, every human embryo embarks on an incredible nine month journey of development. Now, cutting-edge technology makes it possible for National Geographic's In the Womb to open a window into the hidden world of the fetus and explore each trimester in amazing new detail. Revolutionary imagery sheds light on the delicate, dark world of a fetus as never before.

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