Recording Your Child's Birth

The day of birth of a child is usually a special day in the parents life and as the saying goes, "A picture is worth a thousand words," but a video is worth so much more. People used to get camcorders and other recording devices to record their child's birth in hospital delivery rooms to video their child’s entry into the world, but these days you should to check with your hospital to see if it is allowed, before assuming you can record.

You may wonder why there may be a problem with you recording your child's birth and the ultimate answer is that the good old US of A is a very contentious and litigious country, which is making doctors practice defensive medicine by not allowing births to be recorded.

Although we'd like to believe that all births go smoothly, that isn't true. Complications occur often and in addition to the videoing getting in the way of hospital staff when they are dealing with a potentially serious situation, the video footage can be used as evidence to sue doctors and hospitals in birth injury cases. The video of this miracle moment becomes a litigation document that can be edited to "document" negligence. This is so prevalent now that lawyers are even advertising on TV for customers who believe their child suffered a birth defect to visit them to review their litigation options. These law suits sometimes leave hospitals paying substantial amounts out in malpractice law suit payments and subsequently their insurance premiums get hiked up.

Another reason why you may not be allowed to video your bundle of joy coming into the world is that privacy issues can arise when parents post the video showing the medical personnel that attended to the birth on the internet at websites like YouTube or Face Book. when they haven't singed releases allowing them to this.However, you can always shop around for the hospitals that do allow you to record and if don't find one and push comes to shove, you can always have a home birth and video all you want.