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Woman gives birth live on the Internet
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The Toronto Star-Zoe McKnight
A young couple and their children relax on a couch, eating midnight snacks, reading aloud, giggling and chatting.
It looks like any normal weekend night, except that just minutes before, 32-year-old Nancy Salgueiro gave birth to a baby boy.
Live on the Internet. While we watched.
Salgueiro, an Ottawa chiropractor and birth coach, and her husband, Mike Carreira, 35, made headlines last month when they announced Salgueiro’s third delivery would be live-streamed online to anyone willing to sign up and watch. Plenty did. The website had recorded some 13,350 views after the baby arrived just after 3 a.m. on Sunday.
A few hours earlier, around 12:30 a.m., Salgueiro announced she was indeed in labour but would try to get some sleep.
“We have been in early labor since about 5 p.m. but it's getting late and we need to rest,” she wrote in an email. “I will send another email when things get going more intensely or when we get up in the morning, whichever comes first. With my first when I went to rest she was born two hours later.”
True to her word, about two hours later, Salgueiro appeared in front of the webcam, pacing and moaning, her contractions now two minutes apart, lasting a minute apiece.
“We are up, baby doesn't want me to sleep,” she wrote at 2:40 a.m.
By 3:19 a.m., her third child, a son, had entered the world by way of a tub full of water and a few big pushes. There was a dramatic pause as the couple, their older children, the midwife — and the world wide web — waited for the baby’s first cry.
“I can’t believe you already came out! That’s so crazy,” Salgueiro said. “I’m in total shock right now that I actually have a baby already.”
Salgueiro appeared surprisingly calm and relaxed as she nursed her sleeping infant, supervised as her two-year-old son Taivus cut the umbilical cord, answered the phone, entertained her five-year-old daughter Leilani, and even gave her husband instructions on filming.
By the time the camera was turned off, around 5:20 a.m., the baby had not yet been named. The standard height and weight data weren’t given, but the infant was checked out by a midwife.
The live-stream showed no graphic images, just Salgueiro in a bikini top crouching in a pool of water, and then the newborn in her arms. The water was darkened with blood, and the footage also included a detailed lesson on placenta — “the baby’s little house.” Salgueiro told the Star the purpose of the live-stream was to show childbirth as empowering, not frightening.
Viewers from as far away as Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and the United States signed up to watch.
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