Are you pregnant and considering a water birth? Well, you’re in the right place! In this article, we’ll dive deep into the science behind water birth and explore how immersion in water can facilitate a smooth birth experience for both mother and baby.
Water birth is gaining popularity as an alternative birthing method, but what exactly does the science say? Research suggests that water immersion during labor can help ease the intensity of contractions, reduce pain, promote relaxation, and enhance the body’s natural pain-relieving hormones. The warm water also provides buoyancy, allowing the mother to move more freely and find comfortable positions.
Moreover, water birth has been found to contribute to a more gentle transition for the baby from the womb to the outside world. The water creates a familiar and soothing environment, mimicking the amniotic fluid they’ve been surrounded by for the past nine months.
With the benefits of water birth backed by scientific evidence, it’s no wonder many expectant mothers are embracing this birthing option. So, if you’re curious to learn more about the science behind water birth and how it can positively impact your childbirth experience, keep reading!
The History of Water Birth
The first documented water birth that we know about occurred in France in 1805. The mama was having a long and difficult labor. After a while, she was helped into a warm bath to relax. Soon, after getting into the water, her labor progressed and she gave birth to her baby in the water.
The Science Behind Water Birth
Without being in labor you can easily experience some benefits of being in warm water. A warm bath can help you release tension throughout your entire body and relieve pain.
Have you ever gotten into a warm bath or shower when you had menstrual cramps and noticed how significantly they improved?
Scientifically proven water birth benefits include:
- Greater birth satisfaction [1-3]
- Improved pain management and reduced use of pain medications [4]
- Increased mobility [4]
- Lower pain scores [4]
- Reduced anxiety [4]
- Decreased episiotomy rate [5]
- Higher rates of intact perineum, meaning no perineal tears [6]
- An increased chance of giving birth in an upright position, which is needed to create the most space possible for your baby to pass through. [7]
Water birth offers a range of benefits for both the mother and the baby. The warm water provides a soothing and relaxing environment, promoting a sense of calmness during labor. The buoyancy of water enables the mother to move more freely and find comfortable positions, which can help alleviate the pressure on the joints and reduce muscle tension. Additionally, the water supports the mother’s weight, making her feel lighter and enhancing her mobility.
Further, for the baby, water birth provides a gentle transition from the womb to the outside world. The warm water mimics the amniotic fluid, creating a familiar and calming environment. This can help reduce stress for the baby and promote a smoother transition, as they are surrounded by a medium that feels similar to what they’ve been immersed in for the past nine months.
How Water Immersion Affects the Body During Labor
Water birth is rooted in the principles of hydrotherapy and the benefits of water immersion. When a woman enters the water during labor, several physiological changes occur in her body. The warm water causes blood vessels to dilate, improving circulation and oxygenation of the muscles. This increased blood flow can help reduce pain and relax the muscles, making contractions more manageable.
The buoyancy of water also plays a crucial role in water birth. The water supports the weight of the mother, allowing her to move and change positions more easily. This freedom of movement can help alleviate pressure on the spine and pelvis, leading to increased comfort during labor.
Furthermore, the warm water stimulates the release of endorphins, which act as natural pain relievers. Endorphins not only help manage pain but also promote a sense of relaxation and well-being. This can contribute to a more positive and empowering birth experience for the mother.
Preparing for a Home Water Birth
While water birth has been shown to have numerous benefits, it’s essential to consider safety precautions when opting for this birthing method. Here are some key safety considerations to keep in mind:
1. Consult with a midwife: Before choosing water birth, it’s essential to consult with your midwife or OB and discuss your medical history, any existing conditions, or complications that may impact your suitability for water birth. This is important for any birth in any location you are planning!
2. Choose a qualified midwife or OB: Ensure your provider is experienced in water births and can provide appropriate care and monitoring throughout the process.
3. Maintain proper hygiene: The water used during water birth should be clean, and the birthing pool or tub should be regularly disinfected to minimize the risk of infection. Avoid using a jacuzzi tub.
4. Monitor the baby’s well-being: Your midwife should provide you with intermittent, regular monitoring of the baby’s heart rate and well-being throughout labor to ensure their safety and detect any potential signs of distress.
By taking these safety considerations into account and working closely with your provider, you can make an informed decision about having a home water birth!
Supplies Needed for a Home Water Birth
To have your home water birth, there are some supplies you’ll need to fill up, maintain, and take down the birth pool. Your home water birth supplies may include:
- Inflatable birth pool
- Electric air pump (to inflate the birth pool)
- A birth pool hose
- Shower hose adapter
- Water birth net/fish net to collect anything in the water (bowels, mucus plus, meconium, etc.)
- Birth pool drain pump
- Plastic floor covering
- Birth pool disposable liner
- Another plastic covering to keep the pool warm when it’s not in use
- A bucket water heater to warm up the water again if it gets too cold
You can get nearly all of these home water birth supplies with the Birth Pool in a Box Package from ‘In His Hands’ online store.
Also, if you’re interested in a white, modern, and trendy style for your home water birth, check out the new Earthside Birth Pool Package!
How to Use Your Birth Pool and Take it Down
When having a home water birth, your midwife will do most of the work of setting up and taking down the birth pool for your home water birth. Nevertheless, the following explains set-by-step, how to set up, use, and take down your water birth pool.
how to set up and use your birth pool:
- First, lay down the plastic floor covering where you would like to set up your birth pool.
- Next, unpack your deflated birth pool on the plastic floor covering.
- Use the electric air pump to inflate the pool.
- Then, grab your hose and take it to the nearest bathroom.
- Remove your shower head and use the shower hose adapter to connect the hose to the shower arm pipe.
- Take the other end of the hose and place it into the birth pool.
- When you’re ready to fill up your birth pool, turn on the shower to warm/hot to fill the birth pool. Your water should be maintained at about 92-100 degrees Fahrenheit (32-38 degrees Celsius) [8].
- Check the water temperature whenever you need to using a thermometer such as this fast and accurate, No-Touch Thermometer from Amazon. Hot tip: Swirl the water with your hand and take the temperature in a couple of different areas of the pool for an accurate estimate.
- If you’re not using the pool yet, cover it with the extra plastic covering to keep the heat in. If the water gets too cold, you can use a bucket water heater (before you get in the pool) to heat it back up, or use big soup bowls to empty some water from the pool and add in more hot water.
How to take down your birth pool:
- First, fill a steel bowl with a little bit of water. Using the water birth net, clean out any big pieces in the water and put them into the bowl. When you’ve collected most or all of the things in the bowl, eampty the bowl into the toilet and flush them away.
- Next, remove the hose from the shower arm pipe.
- Also, remove the shower adapter from the hose.
- Then, lift the seating and lid of the toilet to put that end of the hose into the toilet bowl hole and rest the seating and lid of the toilet over the hose.
- Following, grab your birth pool drain pump and connect the other end of the hose to the pump.
- Put the birth pool drain pump into the water and plug it in for it to turn on and begin draining the pool.
- Once the water gets low enough, either tilt the pool water to the drain pump or unwrap part of the birth pool liner to bring the water to the pump.
- Once the water is all drained, unplug the drain pump, take it out and put it into a big plastic bucket, such as one from a hardware store.
- From here, you can remove the birth pool liner and throw it away.
- Next, sanitize the birth pool using wipes or a cleaner.
- Then, deflate the birth pool by sucking the air out with the air pump or manually pushing it out after unplugging the air stoppers.
- Once the birth pool is sanitized and deflated, you can put it back in its bag and throw away the plastic floor covering.
Tips and Tricks for Your Home Water Birth
1. pick out a birth pool
Often home birth midwives have birth pools for rent or you can rent or buy one online. There are newer white birth pools made by Earthside Pools that some mamas are really liking for an aesthetic birth space. So there are a few options you can look into regarding getting your birth pool.
2. a disposable birth pool liner
Ensure you get a couple of birth pool liners for easy cleanup and an extra sanctuary environment for just you, your baby, and your partner.
Additionally, these liners are made of thin and transparent PVC and intended for single use. So, be sure to throw them out after the birth.
3. get a brand new water-safe hose
Always fill your birth pool with a new hose which is connected to a new tap connecter. Then, rinse some water through the hose straight into the sink for a couple of minutes before turning the water off, taking the hose to the inflated birth pool, and starting to fill up the pool.
Filling up a birth pool usually takes about 30 minutes or longer, depending on your water system.
4. when to fill the water birth pool
For a first-time mother, a good guide is to begin to fill the pool once your contractions are regular, about 3-4 minutes apart, lasting about 1 minute, and keeping this pattern for at least a full hour. If you were going to the hospital or the birth center, this is when it’s advised to leave home and go there.
5. turn up your water heater
If needed, turn up your water heater to ensure there’s a lot of hot water available before labor begins.
Birth pools, just like bathtubs, can lose heat pretty quickly and may need to be emptied a bit and refilled with new hot water.
6. optimal birth pool temperature
Your midwife will monitor the birth pool temperature as she and your partner or the other midwife are working to fill up the birth pool. The water temperature should be about 92-100 degrees Fahrenheit (32-38 degrees Celsius) to avoid it being too hot for you and your baby [8].
7. Trial run
Trial your birth pool, hose, and adapter at 37 weeks to be sure everything is working as it should for your home water birth.
8. more air
Fill up your birth pool with more air than you think is needed so that it’s very hard and supportive for your body.
9. How high should you fill the birth pool with water?
The water in your birth pool should completely cover your belly and under your breasts for the best pain-relieving effects.
10. draining the birth pool after water birth
Your midwife will have a drain pump to drain the birth pool water down the sink or into your yard after the birth. This process usually takes about 20 minutes.
11. should you put a towel over your baby while holding them in the birth pool following the water birth?
Often after birth, the mother and her baby do skin-to-skin and a bit of breastfeeding during ‘the golden hour’. With this, a midwife or a nurse puts a towel over the baby to better insulate the heat between the mother and her baby.
However, with a home water birth, Barbara Harper from Waterbirth International says not to use a towel on the baby in the birth pool because when the towel gets wet, any part that moves above the water, but is still on the baby, will get too cold. This could then make the baby too cold too.
Fun fact: There are studies confirming that skin-to-skin helps your baby regulate their body temperature better than any baby warmer.
Neonatal Outcomes Following Water Birth
Next, let’s go over a systematic review and meta-analysis on maternal and neonatal outcomes following water immersion during labor and water birth [9].
Systematic reviews and meta-analyses are the strongest and most reliable forms of research studies that form a concussion on a topic using several randomized controlled trials which are just under systematic reviews and meta-analyses for their quality of evidence. So generally, good studies.
So, this review included 36 studies with a total of 157,546 participants almost all of which were first-time mothers and ⅔ took place in the hospital setting.
This study found no difference in: [9]
- Rates of shoulder dystocia
- Anal sphincter injuries
- Heavy postpartum bleeding
- Manual removal of the placenta
- Newborn resuscitation
- Transient tachypnea of the newborn (which is rapid breathing caused by fluid in the lungs)
- Neonatal respiratory distress syndrome
- Newborn infection, although this was from only one study with 230 participants
- Newborn mortality
- Breastfeeding initiation
Water Birth Safety Considerations
When all of these tips and tricks are followed, in addition to having the help of a skilled midwife, there isn’t really a risk of neonatal infection caused by water birth.
Although, there has been cases of neonatal infection that seem to be caused by the infant being born in an unclean tub, especially a jacuzzi tub as it’s really difficult to fully sanitize every nook and cranny of them.
Therefore, outside of those circ*mstances, which are extremely rare and not recommended, this doesn’t seem to be a concern for well-planned home water births.
The American College of Nurse Midwives is a strong advocate for water birth accessibility for all women and has been pushing for the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology to follow suite in promoting this option [10].
Conclusion on Preparing for Your Home Water Birth
Home water birth continues to gain popularity and provide fantastic benefits to women in labor. I hope this blog post helped you prepare for your home water birth and learn more about why it should be available for all low-risk mothers and babies going into their unique birth experiences.
If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below👇🏻
Talk soon, mama!
– Katelyn Lauren
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References:
[1] Nikodem 1999. Nikodem C, Hofmeyr GJ, Nolte AGW, De Jager M. The effects of water on birth: a randomized controlled trial. Proceedings of the 14th Conference on Priorities in Perinatal Care in South Africa; South Africa. 1995 March 7-10.1995. pp. 163–6.
[2] Nikodem VC. Immersion in water during birth: a randomized controlled trial [thesis] University of Witwatersrand; South Africa: 1999.
[3] Nikodem VC. Guidelines for underwater deliveries: evidence from randomized controlled trial. Fifteenth Conference on Priorities in Perinatal Care in South Africa; March 5-8; South Africa: Goudini Spa; 1996.
[4] Shaw-Battista, J. (2017). Systematic Review of Hydrotherapy Research: Does a Warm Bath in Labor Promote Normal Physiologic Childbirth? The Journal of Perinatal & Neonatal Nursing.
[5] Nutter, E., Shaw-Battista, J., Marowitz, A. (2014b). “Waterbirth fundamentals for clinicians.” J Midwifery Womens Health 59(3): 350-354.
[6] Gayiti, M. R., Li, X. Y., Zulifeiya, A. K., et al. (2015). Comparison of the effects of water and traditional delivery on birthing women and newborns. Eur Rev Med Pharmacol Sci, 19(9), 1554-1558.
[7] Henderson, J., Burns, E. E., Regalia, A.L., et al. (2014). “Labouring women who used a birthing pool in obsteric units in Italy: prospective observational study.” BMC Pregnancy Childbirth 14: 17.
[8] Water Birth International: FAQs
[9] Burns E, Feeley C, Hall PJ, Vanderlaan J. Systematic review and meta-analysis to examine intrapartum interventions, and maternal and neonatal outcomes following immersion in water during labour and waterbirth. BMJ Open. 2022 Jul 5;12(7):e056517. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-056517. Erratum in: BMJ Open. 2022 Sep 27;12(9):e056517corr1. PMID: 35790327; PMCID: PMC9315919.
[10] American College of Nurse-Midwives Position Statement on Hydrotherapy During Labor and Birth
