A woman has created a buzz online after she shared videos of herself giving birth to her son in the Pacific Ocean.
Josy Peukert, 37, posted videos from the day of her delivery on the shoreline of Playa Majagual, Nicaragua.
She delivered her baby without medical assistance in a so-called “free birth”, after turning down scans throughout her pregnancy.
“I got this idea in my head I wanted to give birth in the ocean and because the conditions were right on the day that’s what I did,” Josy was quoted as saying by Daily Mail.
“For weeks, I monitored the tide and so when the time was right for me to give birth I knew the beach would be safe for us,” she said.
When Josy knew she was going into labour, her children when to stay with friends while her partner drove her to the beach with a birthing tool kit which included towels, a bowl with a sieve to catch the placenta, gauze and paper towels.
She added, “The waves had the same rhythm as the contractions, that smooth flow made me feel really good,”
While one video shows Josy kneeling in the surf as she undergoes her contractions, another clip shows her holding her newborn son, which has its umbilical cord still attached, in the water.
“After Bodhi was born and wrapped up in towels I went back into the ocean to freshen up. Then I got dressed and we packed everything up and drove home where the three of us got straight into bed. Later that evening we weighed Bodhi with luggage scales, he was 3.5kg or 7lb 6oz,” the mom said.
Josy explained why she wanted her baby to be born without medical intervention. “I wanted to be worry-free for once. My first birth was traumatic in a clinic and my second birth was a home birth but by the third even a midwife in my home was too much. This time I had no doctors’ appointments or scans or outside influence,” she said.
