Laboring and birthing in water

Deep, warm water is one of the most effective forms of pain relief available outside of medication, and one of the few with no side effects. Women who labor in water often describe their contractions as softer and more manageable: still there, but something they can ride and flow with.

The water helps in a few ways:

• Buoyancy. You weigh almost nothing, so changing position is easy even in active labor, and you can rest between contractions in ways that are hard on land.
• Warmth. Steady warmth helps your muscles relax, which often helps labor keep moving.
• Privacy. The tub becomes a small, sheltered space of your own, and many women find it easier to relax and labor there.
• A gentle arrival. Babies born in water move from warm fluid into warm water, like environment to like environment, and are lifted straight up onto your chest.

If you’d like to use a birth pool, we’ll bring one to your 36-week home visit and leave it with you for the birth. Once labor begins, it’s easy to blow up and set up in the room where you plan to give birth, and it’s filled from your tap with a drinking-quality, lead-free hose. We’ll stay in touch during labor to decide together when to start filling it, which is most often in active labor, closer to transition.

We keep the water close to body temperature and check it regularly, along with yours, and we listen to your baby’s heart rate throughout with a waterproof doppler, just as we would on land.

Borrowing the tub doesn’t commit you to birthing in it. Plenty of people labor in the water and then get out to push, or the other way around. Some get in and realize within ten minutes that they’d rather feel solid ground beneath them. All of that is perfectly fine. The tub is there for you, and you decide how and whether to use it.

Occasionally we’ll ask you to step out of the water, and if that happens we’ll explain why. The most common reasons are bleeding we need to check, a labor that has stalled, or a position the tub doesn’t allow.

• Space for the tub, roughly the footprint of a small dining table
• A tap you can reach with a hose, and enough hot water to fill it
• A floor that can take the weight when full (most can; we’ll check during your 36-week home visit)

We help with setting up, keeping the water at the right temperature, draining, and cleaning up. You won’t need to buy anything or sort out details on the day; it’s all planned and in place by your 36-week home visit.