When It Comes to Babies, This Show Delivers

Say Reality TV and most of us think of television at its sleaziest, a sad parade of hookers, pimps and drunken hoods reeling in front of hand-held cameras.

And then there is “A Baby Story.”

Produced by Studio City-based Pie Town Productions, “A Baby Story” is Reality TV at its most upbeat.

Every weekday morning at 11, on the cable Learning Channel, two babies are born into the world on “A Baby Story.” What better time than a few days before Valentine’s Day to consider what all that champagne and romance so often leads to?

Each half-hour segment follows the parents in the weeks before the birth, as they prepare for the event that will reposition the center of their universe.

The staff has gone with expectant parents to the vet, as they try to determine how the family Akita and the new baby will get along, and has attended countless baby showers.

Each segment ends with the very pregnant mother-to-be pushing like crazy, then being rewarded with a wet little miracle. If you can watch it with a dry eye, you’re a better person than I am.

This is the show’s second season, and the door of Pie Town’s modest offices above a Ventura Boulevard boutique bears a sign that announces: “Only 48 Babies Until the Millennium! Last Chance to Birth in This Century! This Year We’re Gonna Birth Like It’s 1999!!!”

“This is just a really happy show,” says producer Joan O’Connor. When the show was being launched, she says, “We had to work really hard to find couples.”

Initially, the core staff of eight--mostly women who have yet to have children--recruited at hospitals, birthing centers, Lamaze classes and wherever else pregnant women were likely to be found. They also placed a few ads. For the most part, physicians and hospitals have been cooperative.

“Now that the show’s on the air,” O’Connor says, “a lot of people call in.”

For the mothers-to-be, the all but universal desire to see oneself on TV is countered by the desire to retain a modicum of privacy during the birth.

“People’s concerns are: ‘Will this be shot tastefully? Will this interfere with my delivery?’ ” O’Connor says. “We don’t interfere with anyone’s delivery. We truly are flies on the wall.”

In its first season, the show attracted the most women viewers, ages 18 to 34, of any daytime cable program in its time slot, according to the Nielsen rating service, O’Connor says. Apparently, some college women are abandoning their beloved soaps to watch the births.

O’Connor attributes the show’s success to how much the staff cares about the parents and their babies.

“We pour our hearts and souls into this show,” says O’Connor, whose staff carries around pictures of the babies whose births they have attended and whose parents they have stayed up all night with.

Once one of the show’s producers identifies an appropriate couple, she gives the parents-to-be all her phone numbers and urges them to call her the minute the baby makes clear his or her intention to be born.

“We’re tied to our pagers,” says O’Connor. “We’re like Ob-Gyns without the medical degree.”

Tom Henschel and Amy Reichbach of Sherman Oaks called producer Jennifer Freedman at 4:30 in the morning to tell her their baby was on her way.

Henschel, a former actor (“He’s got one of those casual Dad faces,” his wife says) and Reichbach, a health educator at Cal State Northridge, had an unusual story.

As they told Freedman, “We’re expecting, but we’re not pregnant.” Their adopted daughter, Julia, now 13 months old, was born underwater in a darkened Los Angeles birthing center. Father Tom held birth mother Cindy’s foot while she pushed, and Amy cut the cord.

The Henschels’ older daughter, also adopted, was concerned when Cindy said she thought she would hold the baby for a moment before giving her to Tom and Amy.

“Are you sure you want to hold it?” Samantha, now 11, asked on camera. “You may not want to give it up.”

Tom was reluctant at first to have Pie Town share in the birth of his daughter.

His thinking, he explains, was: “This is the only birth I’m ever going to be involved in, and I don’t want a camera in my face.”

But Amy and Cindy talked him into taping the life-changing moment. The women’s feeling, Amy says, was: “What a nice legacy and what a nice gift for our child.”

According to O’Connor, Pie Town staff often forms close relationships with the people they film.

“You’re experiencing one of the most intimate and one of the happiest moments of their lives, and you become bonded with these people in the most intimate ways.”

Producer Amy Fosberg also forged a relationship with one of her couples. She produced the segment on the birth of Audrey, now almost 1 year old, to Gail and Joe Zepf of Reseda. Joe, who has been in a wheelchair since he was struck by a drunk driver in 1980, has since become Fosberg’s dentist.

The 50-plus births the show has documented to date have all been healthy ones.

“We’ve never lost a baby,” says O’Connor. “By the grace of God, everything has gone very well.”

In the view of 33-year-old O’Connor, working on the show is about as good as TV gets.

“There’s always a happy ending. There’s always a baby born. It’s miraculous. The first time I saw a baby born I cried. We all cry. “But,” she admits, “it has started my biological clock ticking.”