News Interview Update

Just wanted to post a bit about the news story and interview that I sent an email out about this morning. For those of you who didn't get that email, it said this:

Our doctor told us last night that a local news station in Goiania had gotten word of our homebirth. They called him and wanted to do a piece on us...an interview, show some birth footage, etc. He told them he wasn't going to give them our information, but would ask us. We thought it was a great idea and so they called this morning.

They will be coming over here at 2pm this afternoon. They will be interviewing us and getting the footage of the birth. Joel said the reporter seemed to be very pro normal birth...as in vaginal. Since "normal" birth around here usually means c-section though, this is a very important piece. It's actually very important to us. We definitely want to be used in any way possible to show that there is a better way. The c-section rate here is 80-90% depending on what area you live in. We hope to see that change during our years here in Brazil. Obviously not everyone has to have a homebirth, but it should be made an option as well. So, we're excited to see what will come of this.

Will you pray with us about this interview? Pray that just the right footage be shown, just the right words be said, and that the language barrier would not be an issue. Also, Cass is only about 36 hours old. I am very much still in that postpartum phase of course. The older 2 kids will be at Portuguese class and Eissa will most likely be napping, but still...there is always room for a little chaos with a newborn. Cass is SUPER calm and easy so far, but just pray that this afternoon just go smoothly. Thank you so much.

As I said, they are coming at 2pm. That is 12pm Central time. Thanks so much for your prayers. We really appreciate it.

It went really well. We gave them footage of our births with Cass and Eissa. They asked tons of questions. It seemed to be focused alot on water births and not necessarily homebirths, although of course we stressed our preferences and reasonings on choosing homebirths. They were supposed to go and interview our doctor this afternoon as well. It will be interesting to see how it actually comes out.

It is supposed to air tomorrow. We don't even get local channels here, so hopefully Joel can rig up some rabbit ears or something so that we can see it real-time. We should be able to get some footage from the station themselves either way.

Like I said, it went really well. We hit if off really well with the reporter and the camera man. It was very interesting to be a part of a news interview and see how they set things up. We still don't know how they found out about us. We asked them, but the reporter was just assigned our story by her producers and didn't know how they heard. Amazing.

Also, wanted to clarify quickly here, just to make sure you know my heart...
I in no way think c-sections are evil. They definitely have their place and are sometimes very necessary, as are most interventions necessary sometimes (although rarely in my opinion). That is not and should not be the norm though. The bottom line is a healthy mama and healthy baby. But, any interventions, including c-sections, are way more often than not, unnecessary...and even worse for the health of the mom and baby. There should never be an 80-90% rate of c-sections, that's for sure. This is mostly fear-based and so that's just what we hope to counteract in the area of birth in Brasil. It's exciting to see doors continually open here for that. We'll see what happens. Very exciting.

Scroll down for Cass's birth story if you haven't seen it. More pictures of that sweet little girl and her big brother and sisters tomorrow, along with more updates.

P.S. Another temporary blog template here. The one I had from Pyzam stopped showing my blog posts where they were supposed to be (or was that just on my computer...tell me what you saw when you opened my blog...did you have to select the individual post from the list in the right to be able to see the latest post?). The one I want from Pyzam did the same thing. So, we are back to this one from Blogger...just temporarily probably. Anyway...that's the story on the new template...again.