NOT ANOTHER HALLOWEEN HORROR STORY! (Water Birth)

Member Name: katestuartuk

Product:	Water Birth
Date:	29/10/07 (161 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A WONDERFUL WAY TO GIVE BIRTH

Disadvantages: NONE. IT'S ALL JUST FABULOUS!

The Wonders of a Water Birth


Introduction

When I found out I was pregnant it took me a little while to get over the shock of it all, but once I did, and began to think ahead to the birth, I knew instinctively that as well as having a completely natural birth, I wanted to incorporate water somewhere into proceedings.

Getting a completely drug free labour and birth can be a difficult thing these days, when giving birth continues to be seen as a medical undertaking requiring hospitals, doctors, drugs by the bucketful and lots of medical precautions “just in case”. The medical society seems to easily forget that we of the female of the species are designed for giving birth to these glorious babies of ours, and that if they manage to put their intravenous drips to one side long enough, they will maybe get a chance to witness us birthing in a most primal and beautiful way, and all in glorious technicolour! Throughout my pregnancy I found I was able to be quite calm and firm with health professionals, and being well informed about my options helped a lot in my getting what I have to say was the most amazing experience of my life. A perfectly natural and drug free birth, and a beautiful, gorgeous, inspiringly wonderful baby girl to take home and love forever!

At my first booking-in session with my midwife, I discussed with her my hopes to give birth at home and in water, and this was deemed absolutely fine, as long as the pregnancy progressed well and there were no problems. So far so good. Now there were many reasons I wanted to have a home birth, not a hospital one, but I’m going to save that discussion for another review. One of the reasons (though a fairly small one in comparison with the others) was that at home, I knew I would definitely be able to use the pool – in hospital I would have to hope no-one got to the pool first, or I would have to wait my turn! So with a thumbs up from my midwife I put my plans in motion to have my baby at home, getting all the kit I needed and making sure I was totally prepared by reading lots about birth in general, and water births particularly. This review is for you if you are thinking about using water when you have your baby, and I hope it helps!


Why Water?

I am very happy in water. I love the gentle, relaxing and enveloping quality of water, and if it’s warm water, all the better. There is a sort of meditative sense that I get from being in water that I don’t have on land in quite the same way, and being able to get into a state of meditation I knew would help me in the throws of labour. The idea of giving birth in water seemed so natural to me even before I read anything about it. Water’s ability to relax me was a powerful aspect of my choice to strive for a water birth, as I knew that if I could try and be relaxed and calm and let my body and my baby do their work, both baby and I would possibly have an easier time of things, and this was one thing that I am happy to say I was proved right in. Water is also a great method of managing pain, and as I was intending to try and get through my labour and birth without any drugs for pain relief, this seemed like the perfect option for me.


The Pros and Cons of Having a Water Birth

Dealing with the cons first, to be honest there aren’t that many – getting in too early can slow labour down, or even stop it for a while, so this is obviously not a great thing as once you start your labour, you really want it over and done with as soon as possible! The positive aspects of labouring in water far outweigh the negatives, and I’ve tried to cover them here:

Physical Support – water is buoyant and as such, when you’re in it, you are supported. There is a sense of weightlessness which is divine when you’ve had to get used to lumbering about like an elephant in the last weeks of your pregnancy. Another good thing about the light as a feather aspect of water is that you don’t have the effort of supporting your own weight and therefore your body is conserving energy that it can use to great effect later, when it comes to pushing your baby out. On land you would be using double the energy in supporting your body and labouring/pushing. Definitely a plus point!

Pain Management – as I mentioned before, water has a pain relieving effect on most people: think about how you feel when you have backache, or period pain, and you get into a lovely hot, deep bath. The relief is often instant and breathtakingly good! It’s a fact that a high proportion of women who labour in water don’t need any drugs to help with the pain, or intervention when it comes to pushing the baby out. I didn’t even use gas and air so I’m proof of that! I don’t for a minute think that the pain was any less than when I was on land – the contractions were still very harsh and hard and difficult, but being in the water did much to help me cope with them and that really is the key. You don’t go into labour thinking it’s not going to hurt, but you can go into labour, as I did, believing that you can cope and that you can get through it, and having a way of assisting you in this quest is really important. For me, it was the people I was with, my confidence in my body to do what it was designed for, and the feeling I got from being surrounded by calm and peaceful warm water. It didn’t stop the pain, but it helped me deal with it in quite an amazing way.

Upright and Mobile – it is a fact that the woman who stays upright and mobile, finding positions that are right for her, will have a shorter labour and an easier birth. Being upright means your baby works with your body better and your body lets gravity play its part in getting your baby out into the world.

Shorter Labour – again another well documented fact is that if you labour in water you are likely to have a shorter labour : just make sure you don’t get in too soon – your midwife will guide you.

Perennial Damage – this is the plus point I like best. Labouring in water won’t guarantee an intact lower region, but your chances of tearing are much reduced by having your baby in water as opposed to on land. Again I am proof of this as I didn’t tear at all. Great stuff!

Better for Baby – a baby born in water has a less traumatic time making the transition from being inside you to being out in the harsh air as they have the water as a sort of transitional place. As a result, you are likely to have a very much calmer, chilled out, confident baby and that’s always a good thing! Eva is so calm it’s just amazing and I’m certain that her drug free, intervention free, peaceful water birth has much to do with it!

Better for Mum – as well as having a shorter labour, having potentially less damage below, having a better grasp on pain management and being better able to deal with the pain, mums who birth in water tend to have lower blood pressure than those who birth on land. Now I’m not a medical person, but I imagine it has a lot to do with the fact that in water there are less stresses on your body, and not having to support your own weight (the water does that for you) means your heart doesn’t have to work as hard as if you were on land. Just a theory. Lower blood pressure is certainly a very good thing though!


When You Can’t Have a Water Birth

There are a number of factors that would give any midwife concerns over a water birth, and it’s a very good thing if you can listen to your midwife if he or she thinks a water birth wouldn’t be a good idea. Some of those things they might worry about include:

A breech baby
High blood pressure or raised temperature in the mother
Un-established labour
Foetal distress
Maternal bleeding
Meconium in amniotic fluid

Generally as long as mum is fit and well and baby is doing fine, water birth is a great option. Not all hospitals have facilities for such a birth but the best thing to do is to ask your midwife. You will find however that if you want any sort of intervention or if you are induced (where this involves being attached to a drip and a foetal monitor) you won’t be able to have a water birth. As above, ask your community midwife for more information on your particular situation.


How to get a Water birth

If your local hospital or midwife run birthing centre has the facilities, then this is a good option if you’re happier with the idea of giving birth in a hospital environment. Otherwise, look at hiring a pool for use at home. I actually borrowed an inflatable pool from my sister, who had her second baby at home in it. As it turned out I ended up in the pool at the hospital which was solid and much sturdier than the inflatable job so my advice there would be to hire a solid pool, not an inflatable one as they feel more supportive. Talking to your midwife or GP is the best place to start to get an idea of what’s available to you and how to organise getting the birth experience you want. Being informed is also very important, and can help a lot when you are talking with health professionals. Another thing you can do is check out all the information online – madeinwater.com is a great site and this is where my sister’s inflatable birth pool came from. There are lots of other sites, many written by midwives or including information from midwives which is highly valuable if you’re drawn to the idea of birthing in water.


What You Need for a Water Birth

A pool. Solid ones are best in my opinion, but whatever you decide, made sure its big enough for 2 if you want your partner to be in the water with you to support you, or just big enough for you to move around if you need to.

A thermometer. Very important, this is to keep an eye on the temperature. The water has to be 37 degrees at the point of the baby being born to stop the baby from breathing underwater. The baby won’t breathe until it feels the cool air or cool hands on it’s skin, so for this reason, water births are normally hands off (the midwife or you can guide the baby to the surface and then pick baby up).

Old t-shirt – for wearing in the pool, though to be honest, you’ll probably want to be naked, and your midwife will be happy to go with whatever feels most comfortable to you.

Towels. Lots of them. Warm fluffy ones ready for afterwards and old ones for kneeling on.

Waterproof sheets, old sheeting, old towels or newspapers to catch any splashes and protect your carpets if you’re having the baby at home.

Drinks – energy drinks or fruit juice – I found apple juice fantastic for upping the blood sugar levels towards the end.


Why I loved my Water Birth

As I’ve already said, water is a very calming, soothing influence on me and I wanted to try and capture and utilize this during my labour as I felt sure being calm myself would help me to cope with the pain of the contractions. From the minute I got in the pool at 5 cm dilated, I instantly felt the pain relief and the effect of the warm, deep water just made such a difference to my ability to cope with the pain. The pool seemed to create this bubble of space, a warm, watery sanctuary which I was alone in – and I really was: my partner could have got in with me as the pool was large enough, but I felt happier in there alone. I knew that my supporters – my lovely partner and my sister and my midwife – were there for me, and the support they gave was infact the most amazing I have ever felt before in my life – but having the warm space to retreat into when the pain stopped really helped me zone out, conserve my energy and rediscover my calm inner core ready for the next contraction. I can’t say whether the pain would have been worse on land, but I do have to say that coming out of the pool every 4 hours (I only had to do it twice) for an internal exam to check my progress was horrid and I cannot imagine why any women would want to labour on her back, given the chance to do it upright. The pain was definitely much worse in this position, and made me feel really grateful that I would be able to return to the warm sanctuary of the pool as soon as the exam was over.
One thing which I found quite hard when I was labouring was the hard floor of the pool. If I was doing it all again I would have to insist on some towels or the like to kneel on, as because I adopted a hands and knees position during most of my contractions, my knees and hands suffered quite badly – my knees particularly still, three weeks on, feel quote bruised and sore. However, the positive aspects of my birthing experience far outweigh the odd few negatives. Being able to change positions easily (the water is deep enough that you can float from one position to the next very easily) was a great help, and especially when it came to the final stages of labour when I was ready to push, and discovered that I really wanted to be squatting when I’d spent most of my labour on hands and knees. I seemed to be able to just float around into the right position and from then it seemed only minutes till Eva was born. The support of the water was fantastic, and that, combined with the physical and moral support of my birthing partners, and the confidence I felt in myself that I could do it led me to have the amazing birth that I did.


My Baby Girl and Water

Eva Rose is a sucker for a warm bath. She is the only baby I have ever had the pleasure to meet who doesn’t scream the house down on contact with water. She is so blissfully chilled out that not much seems to phase her, and I’m sure that she is as contented and calm as she is because of her arrival into the world. When she was born, she came up out of the water onto my tummy and I lifted her closer to me and found these wide blue eyes just staring at me, so intently, so calmly. I have never seen anything so serene in all my life and it’s a word that we can still use about her – she is simply serene. Before she was born I had read that babies born into water are often calm and content pretty much from the word go, but I suppose you never really believe it till you see it. We see it every day in her, and it’s an absolute joy.


Final Thoughts

I truly believe my experience of giving birth in water really just validates everything I have ever read on the subject – great pain relief: check. Shorter labour – absolutely: mine was just under 7 hours long, from being established at 3 cm to delivery of the placenta. Now bearing in mind that I had a natural, un-drugged delivery of my placenta, and it took 1 hour 24 minutes to arrive, so the actual time labouring and giving birth was really about 6 hours. Not bad! Damage below? None. Calm baby? Oh yes, definitely! Happy experience full of great hormones that carried me through the three weeks since I gave birth? Yup. My water baby is the best thing I have ever done, and bringing her into the world is the best time I ever had in a pool full of water, bar none. I can’t say more than that. People are always ready to tell you horrid and scary birth stories, but I say don’t listen to them. If you are having a baby any time soon then promise me one thing. Don’t read the horror stories. Don’t listen to the people who want to tell you how horrendous the act of giving birth is. Remember that you are build for the task, that you have the power in you to do the job and do it well. And whether you give birth in water or on land, let the power of it stay with you in the days and months afterwards and remind yourself every day of what a strong and beautiful woman you are to do something so incredibly amazing. I do.

Thank you for reading, Kate x

Summary: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!