Two years ago, a newspaper story about a couple from North Carolina heading to Hawaii for a "dolphin-assisted birth" caught my attention on Twitter. Now "spiritual healer" Dorina Rosin is planning a similar stunt, believing the birth will be more relaxing and natural than one in a hospital. She also believes that her child will be able to speak dolphin. Her birth is to be featured on a British documentary Extreme Births. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puBDR_XM2tI So far, there's no info on whether the mother-to-be has gone through with the at-sea birth or not. For that matter, no one knows what happened to the couple from NC — as far as I can tell, no one has ever actually gone through with a wild dolphin-assisted birth. I was able to find one grainy video of what appears to be a birth with a live dolphin, but it's clear that this woman is in a pool with a captive dolphin, not the ocean. Update 9/2: According to the documentary, Dorina did not go through with her watery plans. She went into labor at night, and thus had a natural birth on land. But, she did say she could feel the dolphins 'sending positive energy'. Below is my original commentary on the practice of dolphin-assisted births, from 2013. But the tl;dr version: Dolphins are wild animals. Wild animals do not make good midwives.
Dorina on her 38-week blessing swim-with-dolphins — a practice considered harmful to the animals. Photo from The Daily Mail
