Why this woman chose to live stream her birth on Facebook

For many women, giving birth will remain a private affair to be witnessed by a select few, but one mum-to-be chose to live stream her birth on Facebook. And 85,000 people tuned in to watch her baby daughter be born.

Charlotte Adams, 28, a Sales Manager for Netmums and her husband Rob Adams, both from Surrey, chose to broadcast her birthing experience to the Netmums Facebook page.

The mum-to-be first started posting on Wednesday morning after her waters broke at midnight the night before.

She went on to post a total of eight live updates during the course of her labour, detailing her experience from her waters breaking, through to her induction on a drip on Thursday evening and to the very last stages of her labour, with her most recent post introducing her new baby daughter to the world.

Charlotte chose to document her birth experience to provide as ‘real’ a vision of what labour and birth are actually like as possible. No airbrushing!

“Everything happened really quickly and escalated much sooner than we thought. I’m rather sore, I’m not going to lie. I don’t even really know how that happened! One minute I was only 3cm dilated, then the next thing I know I was 7cm and asking for an epidural..and then she decided to come!”

During her birth, Charlotte received over a thousand messages of support and encouragement from the Netmum’s Facebook community; something she is hugely grateful for.

“Thanks for the support and to everyone who joined in and gave their advice,” she says.

Speaking about Charlotte’s live birth, Netmums Editor-in-Chief Anne Marie O’Leary, said she hoped it helped to provide viewers with an opportunity to witness an unedited labour.

“‘We’re delighted to have hosted Charlotte’s birth live on Netmums’ Facebook page – with our audience of over one million followers on Facebook, Charlotte got so much support from other mums,” she said.

“And we’re proud that a member of the Netmums team is so dedicated to showing birth just as it is – with none of the airbrushing or lip gloss. Netmums is a big believer in keeping things real and that’s exactly what Charlotte’s doing with this video. We’ve all been watching on the edge of our seats and can’t wait to meet her little girl.”

It isn’t the first time a birth has been live streamed on social media. Earlier this year, blogger Sarah Cantwell live streamed her birth on Facebook with 62,000 people tuning in to watch her baby daughter enter the world.

Speaking about the number of viewers who tuned in to watch her birth experience, she said: “It’s quite crazy how many people were watching. I was only really expecting my friends and maybe some family to tune in.”

All eight of Charlotte’s birth videos are available to view here.

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook for non-stop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. For Twitter updates, follow @YahooStyleUK.

Read more from Yahoo Style UK:

Prince George poses for official first day of school picture

Pink has something to say about people who shame mums breastfeeding in public

Why this midwife is urging couples not to have sex over the Christmas period