Isn't Anything Sacred?

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a prude. I wear low-rise pants and yes I'm aware that my thong is often on display for the world to examine. (This of course is better than seeing crack.) I like sexy, semi-revealing clothes and I can curse like a truck driver after a few drinks. I also publicly breast fed, whipping out my boob everywhere from Starbucks and Central Park to a neighbor's house in the middle of Rosh Hashanah dinner.

But when a friend told me about her recovery experience after delivering her second daughter last week, I thought we've just gone too far. Apparently, these days giving birth has become a very open spectacle. The New York Times ran an article a few weeks ago describing just how public this once private experience has become. Now when women give birth they're inviting professional videographers, photographers, massage therapists, yoga instructors, the butcher, the dry cleaner and any one else who wants in. Distant relatives and neighbors often have a close-up view of perhaps the most intimate moment in a woman's life.

But my friend Sharon is a relatively private person and had no intention to make her delivery a spectacle. Because she had a planned C-Section in a sterile operating room, not a hotel suite type of birthing room, the delivery was not open to the public.

But soon after her organs were put back into place and she was recovering from what is major abdominal surgery, the visitors began arriving in droves. There was a sister-in-law and her nephews, an elderly aunt and her boyfriend, step-cousins, friends, teenage children of friends. So as Sharon was bleeding on her bed, pulling her engorged, cantaloupe-sized breasts out of her gown and trying to shove her tender nipples into her newborn's mouth, she faced a room full of spectators.

"We were all uncomfortable in there," she told me on the phone from her hospital room. (I decided to meet the baby when they returned home.) "I was sharing a room and we had a tiny space and all of these men were in the room watching me and then looking away as I was trying to breast feed Ava. They seemed fascinated and disgusted. It was awful, but I thought they would feel insulted if I asked them to leave. So there I was trying to entertain and nurse. It was totally out-of-control."

Does everyone have to bear witness to mother and baby minutes after delivery? Shouldn't there be some down time? I think I read that Scientologists have a week-long quiet period where no one talks after the birth of their babies. Well, that sounds a little extreme. (Tom Cruise may be preparing Katie Holmes for this ritual.) But a little quiet, bonding time I think is a good thing. Let the relatives and friends bring their gifts and curiosity to your house not your hospital room.