Sex, Love, & Babies; Welcome To The World: 3 Birth Stories

From the makers of Special Delivery (reviewed in our March 1989 issue) these two new entries in the childbirthing subject area offer close-up looks at birth, and the changes in sexual relations which can follow birth. Sex, Love & Babies is an excellent program on a little talked about subject: how newborns affect a couple's relationship--whether it's having sex or going to the movies. Six couples, interviewed together, as well as in groups of men and women, offer candid comments about their experiences. Topics discussed include female body changes after giving birth and the psychological effect on women and men, changes in sexual desire, and the importance of maintaining love and understanding during a highly emotional period (as one female interviewee put it, filled with "the highest highs and the lowest lows"). Couples expecting a baby or thinking about starting a family would surely benefit from this informative, realistic, and candid talk between new parents. Welcome to the World: 3 Birth Stories, on the other hand, treads very familiar ground. Clips of labor and delivery are intercut with interview footage of the three couples profiled in the program, each of whose stories lasts approximately 10 minutes. Two of the births are non-medicated vaginal deliveries (one includes a professional birth companion) and the last is a planned cesarean. None of the stories are really long or detailed enough to give more than a general overview of the birthing process, however; and the basic aim of the program seems more to provide a "feeling" of what an actual birth might be like. Still, Welcome to the World is a very nicely filmed production that would certainly be popular. For libraries that are a little on the flush side, budget-wise, Welcome to the World could comfortably sit right alongside less expensive, more comprehensive productions, so it is recommended (with reservations). Sex, Love & Babies (if you ignore the somewhat socially outdated subtitle How Babies Change Your Marriage) is a timely tape on a topic that hasn't received much attention in childbirthing videos and is highly recommended. (Available from: Injoy Productions, 1490 Riverside Dr., Boulder, CO 80304; (800) 326-2082.)