Mind-blowing. This woman shared her home birth on Facebook

Did you live Tweet your birth? Why ever not?

Did you have a birth plan? Did it involve a preference for painkillers (or not), whether you wanted Dad to cut the cord, maybe a bag of lollies and some mood music? What about documenting the whole experience on Facebook and Twitter, with photos? Not so much?

Ruth Irorio knew she wanted a home birth. She knew she wanted a doula, wanted to manage her pain with yoga and warm baths rather than drugs and she wanted to avoid a hospital visit. She also wanted to share the whole experience on social media. #ruthshomebirth (of course)

Ruth told the Huff Post that her goal was to “share my unique experience, whether attractive or not and just to be honest about it.” And, let’s face it, it’ll be awesome at the kid’s 21st.

On Christmas Day Ruth’s contractions kick in. ‘Labor’s started,’ she Tweeted, ‘feels like shitty period pain in waves.’ She begins. If you can relate, you also know that that’s about as pretty as this thing is going to get. And yes, the following updates involve mucus plugs, diorreah, aching assholes and a great number of posts that state ‘This shit really hurts’. Yes, Ruth. It really, really does.

Follow Ruth’s home birth journey here (my absolute favourite is Ruth having a whiskey sour in the bath four hours in – this alone has made her my new hero). Some of these images are NSFW:

Happily Ruth and her husband Jared’s little boy was born healthy at home 12 hours later, but when Ruth’s placenta failed to detach she was taken to hospital, where she ended up having a blood transfusion and spending two nights. She made a full recovery, and  little Nye is gorgeous and, judging by her final posts, filling her parents with all the loved-up besottedness every lucky new baby does, which is exactly as it should be, but I think Ruth might be the most crazy brave new mum I’ve ever seen.

There is absolutely no evidence of me giving birth to my two kids (other than, um, the kids themselves). I wish I felt strong and empowered during those experiences but in fact I have never felt so vulnerable, and they remain the most intense and private moments (um, hours… and hours) of my life, shared only with my partner. He and my midwife are the only people in the world who know what I look like, sound like (ug, smell like), when I’m in labour, and for me that’s exactly how I want it. I am not as brave as Ruth. But a whiskey sour would have been very welcome.

Did you share pictures of your birth?