[steven moore]

Hi evryone,

I'm trying to cath up wiht mail and ran across this thread.  It was 
interesting to me, because as this thread started up last Friday, my wife 
was in labor with our first baby.

Ethan James is doing well and mom is recovering here at home.  No Oils 
during labor, my wife wasn't crazy about the idea, though she loved the 
shows that we made it to in 2001 and 2002.  Peter Gabriel's Passion CD was a 
first choice, but somehow all of the painful parts of labor were done to 
Moby's Play album.

Okay, back to my 2 hour nap/diaper change/nap cycle,

Steven


>From: Kate <kate@dnki.net>
>To: powderworks list <powderworks@cs.colorado.edu>
>Subject: Re: [Powderworks] Music to be born to...
>Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 20:31:49 -0400
>
>At 06:58 AM 5/23/03 -0500, you wrote:
>>All,
>>     My wife and I are expecting our second child in early July.  With the 
>>first child, my wife and I made a mix tape to listen to during labor.  In 
>>fairness to the second child, we do not want to reuse the same tape again.
>
>Why not?  If anything, you should think about what worked, what didn't, and 
>make appropriate changes.
>
>The babies don't care.
>
>>So, my question is this:
>>
>>For you ladies, which song(s) (Midnight OIl or other) would you put on 
>>your labor tape?
>
>I really didn't have labor tapes per se ... just a box of cd's.  When Ian 
>was born I did a lot of early to mid labor dancing and booty shaking to the 
>surfier MO works (head injuries, place without a postcard, up tempo works 
>from ESM) as well as to Shadowy Men and Ventures.  The Pixies just confuse 
>the staff and Dead Kennedy's were outright disturbing.
>
>I can explain why the booty shaking is physiologically important in labor 
>in exquisite detail, but its boring as ... ;-) That and relatively 
>irrelevant at the time save for its high utility in telling nurses to go 
>away and take their confining machines that go BING with them.  (Professor 
>Erin would just correct me anyway)
>
>>For all (as to not be exclusionary), what song(s) (Midnight OIl or other) 
>>would you like to enter the world to.  Remember, this will be the first 
>>song you hear outside of the womb!
>
>My boys both entered the world to strains of Gondwanaland.  I had purchased 
>the disc at WOMAD and made change out of Charlie's bush hat.  There was one 
>particular cut that was all I wanted to hear over and over and over.  If 
>didge music is the sound of the earth talking, there was never any time 
>that I more wanted to hear from Mother Earth than when bringing the babies 
>to light and air.
>
>Then again, after Ian's birth, I couldn't get The Breeder's "Cannonball" 
>out of my head ... he was breech and very nearly born in the hot tub.
>
>Your mileage may vary.
>
>One thing you may already know, since this is round 2: does your wife 
>consider music a distraction or a focal point?  All the birthing classes 
>recommend a visual focal point, but that doesn't work if a) she is 
>seriously nearsighted and her contact lenses pop out with each serious 
>contraction and b) she is highly visually oriented and thus distracted by 
>visual input, not focussed by it.  It makes a difference because women who 
>are distracted by having music playing (i.e. like it quiet when they work 
>on intense projects - and this is an intense project!) may prefer light 
>background music when the really hard work starts, while those who use 
>music and not a picture of the cat or first baby as a focal point need 
>something a little more interesting and complex to groove into.
>
>Best of luck with the birth!
>-Kate

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