Customer Reviews

Birth As We Know It

5 star:		(52)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

If you are ever planning to birth a baby, or are working as a doula, midwife, or women's health instructor, I HIGHLY recommend getting this DVD. It is now available in a full-length feature film (wonderful!) and a shorter instructor's version for use in classrooms. It is BY FAR the best birthing DVD I have ever seen. If you have been disillusioned by "Baby Story" episodes on television, or horrified at terrible hospital-room birthing stories your mother, friends, or the media tell - get this! It will empower you with real, factual, and beautiful knowledge of birthing and your body's amazing natural power and abilities. There are 11 natural births featured within, as well as many other extras on topics such as lotus birth, diaper freedom, circumcision, etc. It is THEE BEST money I have ever spent on a DVD or Birthing Information.

I'm a homebirth midwife and I see natural births all the time. But when my own daughter-in-law was pregnant with my first grandchild last summer, I brought this video over so we could share it together. She loved it and we watched it more than once. We laughed together when I told her that I would try to remember tell her to "let herself become nice and juicy" as the narrator describes in her lovely Russian accent. And she said she wanted to be reminded to swirl her hips, as some of the women did in the video. Although she went 12 days overdue, she had a very efficient and successful home waterbirth in which she did indeed swirl her hips while pushing! And she told me later that she felt that watching this video really helped her prepare to surrender to her labor.

I have shared it with other moms too, and everyone thinks it's super. I've seen lots of birth videos, and believe me, this one is special.

As one of the early pioneers of water birth at the Rainbow Dolphin Centre
in New Zealand 25 years ago, I have tried to get important visual material
out there for prospective parents, midwives and doctors to view.
It is a very difficult and delicate task, this DVD has it all, and is an
opportunity to get invaluable information to assist making and informed
choice about using water as a birthing tool. Even if you are not preparing
for birth it is a visually exciting production and well worth having to change your reality forever.
Estelle Myers
MApp.Sc.Hon.Phd
Founder Director
Rainbow Dolphin Centre

i've been lucky enough to see many, many birth videos. some are short, expensive & extremely worth every penny for the knowledge they impart, others are long & controversial. while i was nervous about watching the circumcision, i did & it was every bit as horrible as a photo of a circumstraint would have you imagine. i'm proud to have kept my son intact. as for the "ice dipping" that is shown; i cannot, for the life of me, figure out how that could possibly be beneficial for either pregnant woman, child or infant, as all are seen immersing themselves completely in meltwater. i can tell you from experience that contraction pain feels nothing like - and is totally different from - the pain experienced in extreme cold. they have different functions. contractions open you up, while freezing shuts you down. i disagree strongly with concept of dunking a helpless infant under freezing water. throwing snow on a naked infant seems pointless & cruel. and what's up with the passive mothers just staring down at their babies while the midwives float them around underwater? pick that baby up & smile! cuddle your precious newborn! don't sit there like, "can i pick her up yet, please?" okay, okay... my favorite aspects of this film are birthing in the sea (how fun would that be?! yay!), lots of labor support, smiling mamas, peaceful music & yes, the circumcision. because people need to see how barbaric it is. so that's my .02. i like it, i don't love it, but i don't hate it.

I have a modest goal for this masterpiece by Elena Tonetti-Vladimirova. I want every young woman in the entire world to see this DVD. This will give her freedom of choice with her births. She can choose to have a joyous birth, or not. This DVD helps to prevent so many behavioral problems that arise from common birth trauma. Parents can now have wonder children, and not spend much of their lives trying to repair the damage caused at birth. As a Professor of Family Medicine, University of Washington (retired), I say, "That is our birthright."

Already purchased in 51 countries (without any marketing plan!) this DVD is currently being translated into many languages.

I bought the Educational Version of this video, and I was a bit disappointed. I enjoyed seeing women actually give birth. It was inspiring to see how happy and peaceful they were. If you are afraid of the labor process, this video may help calm you. However, the narrative is definitely a differing philosophy from my own. I prefer a more natural birth to a birth with unnecessary interventions, but I do not believe, for example, that we carry trauma from our own births that we have to work out before we birth our own children. I also do not agree that we carry genetic knowledge from our ancestors. If these sound like ideas that interest you or that you already believe in, this video would be a great choice for you! However, if you lie on the more medical/technological side of the childbirth debate or somewhere between medical and natural, this video may not be the best choice for you. I was hoping for a video more educational, with more tips on how to deliver at home or in a birth center, more about the physical process of labor, how to cope with the strength and pain of birth, and how to make decisions about your birth and pregnancy that are right for you, regardless of your philosophy. If you want to learn more about birth and pregnancy, I would highly recommend Our Bodies, Ourselves: Pregnancy and Birth for any philosophy. If you are looking for a video that teaches you more about birth and lets you see it happening, take a look at the other options at your disposal and decide on the video that seems to fit what you're looking for. Good luck, and if you or someone you know is pregnant, congratulations, and may the birth be one of the happiest memories of your life!

This film is the most outstanding expression of sacred birth imaginable. The footage of birth is exquisitely beautiful and the wisdom offered about what is involved in creating a gentle birth is outstanding. I think all young adults should view this film before getting pregnant so they have the highest possible vision for their future.

TWENTY THUMBS UP!!!

In Quipper's review, below, s/he complains about nudity, hippies, and people enjoying the birth process. As a student of psychology, and an owner of this DVD, I have a suspicion that Quipper had a very difficult birth, and this DVD reminded Quipper of his or her own birth trauma. When I watched it, I remembered some of the trauma of my own birth (and my circumcision!), and I breathed through the memories. This freed something up in me. Quipper apparently decided to make the film wrong and bad, when s/he could have just done a little therapy instead. The alternative explanation is that Quipper was raised by fundamentalists who believed that the human body is inherently bad, or that it should be covered up at all times. I wonder how s/he takes a shower. Fully clothed, I would guess.

If you're a prude, or can't deal with images of the human body in its exquisite beauty during the birth process, don't buy this DVD. Otherwise, watch the DVD and be amazed at what is possible when a woman cooperates with nature during the birth process. I wish we had seen this before our daughter was born. It's a beautiful work of practical art.

This wonderful new film explores and reveals deep wisdom in the natural process of giving birth. An essential film for anyone working with women and couples preparing to have a baby. A must see for anyone preparing to concieve and give birth! Thank you Elena and everyone who worked together to create this beautiful, educational and inspiring work of art. -- Highly recommended!!!

The power of books to change the face of the world is a rare but accepted event. Rarer and less accepted is the power of film. But media producer Elena (Vladimirova) Tonetti has crafted just such a potent work in Birth As We Know It. Elegant, and patient, the film springs out of - and dwarfs - her previous delightful compilation Birth Into Being. This is a far matured, measured and more wonderful work.

In the early 1980 s a group of remarkable women and their partners, of which Elena was one, convived a series of Birth Camps next to the Black Sea. There they prepared themselves and each other, against medical practice and advice, learning as they went, to give birth to their children in the sea. They were accompanied and inspired by dolphins, the wind, the rugged landscape, the sea around them, each-other and each succeeding birth.

The most amazing treasure of this film is not the natural beauty and grace of the mothers and celebrated children in her film, whether birthed in the sea, the home bath, or on the hospital delivery gurney. Rather it is the careful and measured narration Elena uses to direct us toward cognitive revelation. She does this in part by quietly and effectively juxtaposing these prepared for, relished and very peaceful births against common slap-dash medical practice, regular circumcision, and caesarian births.

A film to gently wake the dead parts of ourselves and our culture. A treasure for the yet to be born. Utterly magnificent!