On the Fourth of July, an American couple awaits the birth of their first child in a private hospital room with a spectacular view overlooking San Francisco. A welcoming committee hands out red, white and blue party hats /and American flags. Far away, in Nacre, Ethiopia, a pregnant woman lies on a bed in a rural maternity ward. The sole doctor on duty, a Chinese woman, is attending to five expectant mothers, all suffering complications; two babies have already died on her shift this night, and another was dead born. What are the hopes, anxieties and rituals that parents around the globe bring to childbirth? How closely are the lives and health of mothers and infants determined by the accident of geography? "World Birth Day", an ambitious and affecting two-hour documentary tonight on the Learning Channel, follows 11 women giving birth over 42 hours in 9 countries. Watching them, one wonders how the species ever managed to survive. Human Cartier Pasha Replica reproduction appears to be such a complex gamble, so filled with pain and uncertainty that each happy birth seems like a small miracle. In this situation the engineering effort that actually put a satellite into orbit used principles understood only before the attempt was contemplated; The development of the scientific principles concerning gravitation could, without too much distortion, be attributed to Newton. An appreciation of the composition and structure of the atmosphere goes back at least to Evangelista Torrid-celli, a student of Galileo. Torricelli’s concept of a "sea of air" was a critical to the development of orbiting satellites. This conceptual schema was developed in detail by succeeding generations of scientists. Engineers attempting to design rocketry equipment face problems of fantastic complexity. The difference between their situation and that of basic scientists is that the problem is more specific (to put a satellite in orbit). The general concepts and details subsumed under these principles were previously available. The engineers asked "How does one use these principles to design a system that accomplishes the objective?" In a Kabul suburb, a crazy father scrambles to find the cash needed so that his premature twins, in mortal danger, can be transferred to the intensive care unit of a major hospital. In Cairo, the first words a baby girl hears are the call to prayer, and then her ears are pierced. Conditions in Ethiopia raise the worry of past centuries in Europe, when women frequently died in labor. In San Francisco, a doctor does everything she can to avoid a Caesarean Replica Jaeger-LeCoultre section; in Mexico City, the operation is performed routinely. A 23-year-old at a crowded charity hospital in Kerala, India, bears a six-pound boy without the help of drugs. "We believe you need to feel the pain to love the baby," an older woman explains. More history would have helped put individual stories in context. But "World Birth Day" offers an effective segment of the complex emotions and customs surrounding the beginning of life, evoking the deep well of compassion that binds women through this shared experience and the unusual magic of that moment when a hidden being is first revealed to the world's eyes.
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