Birth Isn’t Like the Movies: Mom in Labour Does an FB Live

Sarah posted five videos when she went into a 24-hour-long labour.

“I’ve been vlogging about motherhood and my pregnancy this year so it was natural for me to do the same and share my labour,” said 35-year-old Sarah-Jayne Ljungström on why she did a Facebook live during child-birth.

So I decided to share my own to show a real every day labour that other mums and pregnant woman could follow and see how it went. Birth isn’t really like the movies so showing a normal everyday labour story was nice.  

Sarah-Jayne Ljungström

The live was watched by over 200,000 strangers, reports The Sun. Sarah went live from her residence in Richmond London. She sat on a couch, eating pizza when her water broke, and later announced to 86,000 people that she was 2 cm dilated.

Sarah posted five videos during the entire course of her labour which lasted 24 hours.

An ad-agency director, she posted her first live stream on 21 December 2016 to connect to other mothers.

I find being a mum so rewarding but it can be overwhelming and lonely. I was always looking for help and advice especially about the big things like labour and feeding that I was anxious about. Stories from other real mums I could relate to helped me so much.

Sarah-Jayne Ljungström

As the contractions became more demanding, Sarah said to her audience:

Don’t let me get pregnant again. If I ever say I want another baby I can watch this back... I’m not going to do through the hard bits because I wouldn’t be able to be so calm.

The videos were posted on the Facebook page of the website Channel Mum, which is a platform for mothers all over the world to connect with each other.

Commenting on social media, Sarah further added:

I think our social networks are amazing support networks – especially in the online motherhood world. So I just felt I was chatting to a bunch of mums who all had my back and were giving me words of encouragement. Emotionally it made me feel braver and more hopeful as I had the encouragement of women I knew had been there and done it.