THE FAMILY WAY

After filming train wrecks, toxic-waste spills, volcanoes and celebrity bios, free-lancer Liz Bailey thought that she had shot the most volatile, emotional events around. Then the Louisiana-born documentary maker started filming childbirth.

It began in the let-it-all-hang-out ‘70s; several of her friends asked her to film the births of their babies.

“I had shot from helicopters, F-16s and speeding trains,” says Bailey, who’s in her 30s. “So I know how to maneuver around doctors. I’m no milquetoast.”

She made the nouveau-natal videos gratis, but the delivery-room experience led to a CBS documentary on midwifery in 1978 and a special on Odent-method (underwater) births for Japan’s NHK TV. Then, two years ago, during a lull in her free-lance work, Bailey decided to go the whole nine months, er, yards. She founded VideoBirths, which has since captured the pathos and joy of 40 births.

She advertises in the Wet Set Gazette (the Dydee Diaper Service newsletter) but clients, many of them celebrities who prefer to remain nameless, say her short films could make it to Cannes. Shots often include a close-up of the mother’s hand gripping the side rail, a father’s changing moods, the first caress and nursing. “Some people even want a close-up of the afterbirth,” Bailey says. “Hey, it’s their party.”

Bailey films a before-birth segment (breathing exercises, renovating the nursery, etc.) and 45 minutes of the birth for $400. On the big day, a family member calls her when the mother-to-be has dilated 6 centimeters to 8 centimeters. But babies have a habit of not arriving on cue--she’s had to wait as long as 15 hours for the kid to make the scene.

Bailey, who can be seen as an on-camera video operator on “Murphy Brown,” has a toddler of her own (whose birth went unfilmed) and tries to be more than a camera. She remembers one baby who was born with an easily removable growth next to its little finger. “The mother started to freak,” Bailey says. “She said, ‘Oh God! My baby is handicapped!’ I just said, ‘That’s a little something extra--a little lagniappe , as we would say back in Baton Rouge.’ ”