Everything you need to know about water birth

Let us first start out by answering the obvious question. What is water birth? If you’re not familiar, water birth is defined as the immersion of moms body during labor and through the pushing phase until the delivery of baby. To simplify, water birth is laboring and giving birth in a pool or bathtub, or other body of water of choice( I have seen some videos of women birthing in the ocean:/). Although, In this post I am going to just stick to talking about the more common ways you hear today about water birthing. Giving birth in the water has become more popular in recent years. The noticed and proven benefits are gaining the interest in moms that are considering a more gentle and unmedicated birth. Research has backed up and shown that there are many proven benefits to the moms while laboring and pushing while in the warm water. It was also shown that there were similar health outcomes to babies who were born in the water and those born not in water. Five small studies on water birth showed that the benefits of laboring and birthing in the water include, lower pain scores, less use of pain medication, less use of pitocin, shorter labors, higher rate of normal vaginal birth, higher rate of intact perineum, less use of episiotomy, and greater satisfaction overall with the birth outcome. They found that there was no evidence of harm to mom or baby in these specific studies. Everybody knows there are risks to everything you chose, these studies weren't large enough to find a rare health impact to mom or babys born in the water.

Being a birth worker in today’s birth scene has allowed me to observe birth in different atmospheres with different clients who had different providers and labor support. One thing I can confidently declare is that being held up by water during some intense contractions always brings a needed grounding or silencing to our body’s tense muscles. In the hospital or at home, you have the option to use water as a comfort measure for your labor. Most hospitals do not “allow” babies to be born in the water but with the right advocating, they should be able to accommodate the use of a shower or pool for laboring. If there is no option to be fully submerged inside a pool of warm water, getting in the shower can have the same relaxing effect on mothers during labor. There is no doubting that being unrestricted and having a toolbox of ways to help support your labor progression will allow your body and your baby to feel ready and safe to move through labor. This is exactly what water birth is. It is a tool inside a toolbox of other tools that can help with comfort and progression of labor. If you are considering if having a water birth or laboring in the water is a safe option for you, ask your provider if it could be an option. If you are considered a low risk client/patient, water birth could absolutely be a tool for you to use to create the vision of how you would like to birth your baby. You should always feel supported in your desires for you birth.