The Beatiful Dr Nancy (Nancy Salgueiro), an Ottawa birth coach, chiropractor and mother of two, has been kind enough to welcome viewers in to her home to witness her home birth…LIVE!!

Years ago, birth was a normal part of life. Women would often witness many births before becoming pregnant with her own child. Women would support other women through birth. But as birth moved out of the home and in to the hospital, we took away the generations of information handed down from one woman to the next. Birth become shrouded and private. Dr Nancy wants to help change the ‘visual blueprint’ of birth as most women know it today. Many women today have only ever witnessed birth in front of a screen in their living room. ‘Reality’ TV shows such as ‘Birth Stories’, or ‘Birth Day’, or births on programs such as ER, depict birth as an over dramatized, medical emergency-people running around screaming and shouting, dad’s passing out, women out of control and hooked up to machines, treated as passive participants in their care, births lasting no more than 30 minutes, series of unlikely emergencies and events and so on, and so on. All these things are great for viewing ratings, but are not good for creating an accurate image of birth. Women are entering in to birth with no real sense of reality of what is going to happen. Less and less people today are attending prenatal parent education classes, and instead, turning to the internet as their source of information. But we all know how the internet works. There are plenty of good sites out there, however there are many many more that are not!

This is an important issue, and one we need to address if we want our image of birth to change to improve our outcomes, and to stop cheating women out of the true potential of birth.

“For me an empowered birth is one where I am the one who makes the decisions for me and my baby. Where I am in an environment of love, support, and respect for the power within my body to successfully birth my baby. Where I can be free to express anything I need to express; sound, movement, fear, love, ecstasy in a place that my expression will not lead to interference from the outside. I believe women have the ability to create an empowering birth experience regardless of if the birth outcome is natural, medicated, or surgical.   When women are making the decisions for their bodies and their babies out of education, faith, belief and confidence in themselves and not out of fear or manipulation they will be empowered.  I believe in the human body, in it’s power, and in birth’s ability to transform a person, woman, wife, and mother.”  Dr. Nancy, Your Birth Coach.

Sign up to watch here