Some women say they want these videos to promote a certain kind of birth, to reclaim their power, and to remember a baby's first moments.
Some want documentation because they want to return later to savour the small, exquisite details they might have missed, the Los Angeles Times reported.
"You are seeing a lot more births on YouTube," Andrea Filardi, a certified childbirth educator and doula who works in Los Angeles, said.
"A lot of people want to show that birth is a natural process. With Facebook and multimedia, they can say, 'Look at the way my kid was born.' I have been in a room where the husband's mother wanted to be at the birth, but she was dying of brain cancer, so they Skyped the birth," Filardi was quoted as saying by the paper.
"In media, in TV, they show birth with women all hysterical, and screaming, and the baby is falling out. It can be quiet and peaceful and a totally different thing. Sometimes when these videos come up on-line, women can see birth does not have to be such a scary, out-of-control thing," Filardi added.
"People want this. This is the most sacred moment in their lives. They want to capture it," Jodie Myers who has been filming births for 12 years in Los Angeles, said.
She edits out the slower sections, like endless pushing, or a 36-hour monotonous labour. "Some of the births on YouTube are kind of boring. They are not done artistically," she said.