Ottawa woman to give birth live on the Internet Andy Johnson, CTVNews.ca |
An Ottawa-area woman is about to share the most personal of experiences with the world, by publicly broadcasting the birth of her child live to anyone who registers on her website and tunes in to watch. Nancy Salgueiro, a chiropractor and trained childbirth educator, is due to give birth to her third child next week. It will be her third home birth. "I really feel it's important for young women to see what normal, natural birth, undisturbed by anything, can be like," she told CTV Ottawa. The 32-year-old from Barrhaven, Ont. has posted video of the births of her two previous children on her website, but this is the first time the experience will go live as it happens. Salgueiro is due on Oct. 7. "It's a little different when it's live. You can check in and see how things are progressing," she said. Salgueiro and her husband Mike Carreira are advocates of natural childbirth. Their shared goal, they said, is to offer an honest account of the joy, as well as pain, that can come with giving birth in a natural way. On her website, yourbirthcoach.com, Salgueiro said childbirth has become an ultra-private, almost secretive experience in North American culture that many women fear because they lack first-person experience. "I do believe birth has been stolen from women," Salgueiro said in a video on her website. "It is such a wonderful, amazing experience and the power that we have in our bodies and in our ability to birth babies and become mothers is incredible, but it's been taken away because we've given that power to someone else and we need to take it back." Salgueiro's husband agrees. However, even though Carreira believes the message is important, he said he isn't entirely comfortable with broadcasting the experience live over the Internet. "I'm more private. She's outgoing, she'd have a mariachi band in here if she could," he said. Carreira added: "It's a big step, but I think the greater good is that young women are learning and seeing what natural childbirth can be like." Salgueiro's two-year-old son Taivus will cut the umbilical cord, now a family tradition after her four-year-old cut his. She promised the footage of her birth will be tasteful, and not graphic. "It's not legs wide open and women screaming...my birth with him, if you watch the labour online, I was completely silent." |
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