I have to agree with you. There may be a medical reason to have more nurses, etc come in at the moment of delivery (baby may have been in distress, mother may be in distress, a medical emergency for one or both may be suspected...) But as to having others in the room when delivery is taking place... Doctor, nurse, father and mother's mother is sufficient. (and father's mother may think she should be there...but that is the limit, IMHO.)

As one who worked OB/GYN/NURSERY for many years, ranging from NO one but Mom and doctor, nurse in the room, to seeing Dads allowed (thought that was terrific!) including NO one in the room when baby was there but Mom and Dad/nurse or doctor and all but Mom and baby in gowns and gloves...to the 'freedom of today'...when anyone (up to limit of four at one time, over age 16 can go into the nurswery and ANYONE can be in the delivery room... where no one wears gowns, including the visitors to the nursery... I prefer the past.

Sorry for the long strung out sentence above. I think we have gone too far. But I will go even further and say that though today it is 'acceptable' for unmarrieds to have and raise kids... if I don't want to marry him, or he does not want to marry me...then he should not be there, either. Some day, a marriage WILL happen. And there will be nothing intimate left to share with that husband that no one else has ever shared before. Sad, IMHO.

One thing to add: we thought it was great for Alexander to be there for his brother's birth. We had been telling him for just under 9 months that he had a new brother or sister inside Mommy's tummy, and having him there to see the birth process I hope completed the whole thing in his mind. Or course, there were no pushy medical personel or anyone else that would have detracted from the peacefulness of the event, or given him a less-than-ideal view of the process, and he really didn't even care that much by the time Katie pushed Dominic out (But he did climb back into the pool once Dominic was out to look at him).

I would strongly assert, however, that if your gut reaction is to not invite someone, then you should not do it. This isn't a dinner party. That being said, there are some people who are comfortable with a large variety of people present during labor (I'm not sure about delivery, but there might be people comfortable with that too). And the large army of various strangers that appear out of nowhere in hospitals was a huge reason that we chose to forgo the hospital route. That and my continued assertion that the more the birth process appears to be a medical event, with the goal of "extracting" a "foreign object" from the mother's body, the more abortion appears to be a normal extension of sexuality.

brandon.

Great comments.

Brandon, I was talking about this with Mama-Lu yesterday, and she gave me the thousand dollar word: intimacy.

This isn't just a "personal" moment, or a "special" moment. It's an intimate moment. The only people that should be there are those with whom the mother shares a special intimacy. This includes, first and foremost, the father. And, as in your case, it in a way does make sense to have other children there - who can argue about the intimacy of that relationship?

The word intimate really cuts to the heart of why the labor party phenomenon is so troublesome. Either we have lost sight of what intimacy (or an intimate moment) is, or we have too many relationships that are too intimate.

Call me and I'll buy you a beer, just stay the hell away from the hospital.

Chris, you make me laugh!

I think you are absolutely on the right track with the "intimacy" idea. People seem to have lost all sense of modesty and propriety of such things. I recently attended a baby shower where the baby had already been born, and all 40 guests were "treated" to a pass-around photo book of the birth-- horribly graphic stuff there. I joked (but I meant it!) "I don't even want to see my own births that closely..."

Well, you can tell how frequently I make the blog rolls (and I've even got them all tabbed in Firefox so I can open them all at once). But we were looking through the late Dr. Ratner's old files in the Stubenville library this summer and Katie came across an article that basically said that excluding dads from the delivery room was equivalent in some base psychology to their wifes having an affair, since childbirth is the end result of sex. (Obviously not always, but you can't have childbirth without sex, and before the separation of conception and sex that was brought on by artificial contraception, the ontological reality was better represented by reality). So that would back you up 100% with the intimacy concept. Sex begins the process, childbirth is the next step in the process, and childrearing is the conclusion of the process. Strangely enough, two parents are better than one in all three of these, although society has marginalised the father's role in each of them one by one.