05/08/2025
Could not not share this incredible and empowering birth story 🙏💝
Freebirth mum delivers baby in ocean: ‘Made me feel really good’
A new mum has gone viral after sharing a video of her “freebirth” into the waves of the Pacific Ocean. Josy Peukert, 37, uploaded a post on Instagram showing how she and her partner drove to the beach so she could have her baby on the shoreline of Playa Majagual, Nicaragua, with the water lapping at her back.
‘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.’
She delivered her baby without medical assistance in a so-called 'free birth', after turning down scans throughout her pregnancy.
When she finally went into labor on Feb. 27, 2022, Peukert’s existing children went to stay with friends, while her husband Benni Cornelius, 42, drove her to the beach with towels, gauze and a bowl with a “sieve to catch the placenta.”
After giving birth to her son — fittingly named Bodhi Amor Ocean Cornelius — the happy couple drove home and weighed the child, who clocked in at 7 pounds and 6 ounces.
Along with the presumed symbolism of giving birth where life originated, Peukert wanted to avoid previous traumatic experiences she had giving birth at the hospital.
“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,” lamented Peukert, who has seven children with her husband. “This time I had no doctors appointments or scans or outside influence.
She added, “We didn’t have a due date or deadline for the baby to arrive, we just trusted that our baby would make its way.”
