You have many choices to make when you find out you are pregnant, including how you will labor and deliver your baby. You decide whether you want to work with a doctor or a midwife. Whether you want to go to a hospital or stay at home. One more choice is whether to give birth on dry land or in a pool of warm water, which is known as a water birth.
Labor Benefits
Relaxing in the warm water during labor can help to keep your contractions regular and prevent your labor from stopping due to erratic contractions. This also helps to reduce stress to the baby during labor. Being relaxed can also help you to avoid the need for pain medications. When you are relaxed in the water, you will have better control over your breathing. Over-breathing during labor can increase the pain a woman experiences. The weightlessness that one feels in the water is another benefit of a water birth. Women who labor in a pool of water will have an easier time moving in to comfortable positions.
Delivery Benefits
Women who give birth in water are less likely to experience tearing because the water softens the skin tissue, making it easier for the tissue to stretch to accommodate the baby's head. You may also have the benefit of using gravity to your advantage while birthing in water. When you give birth in water, you are more likely to be upright than if you were to give birth in a hospital bed, which allows gravity to help your body get the baby out. Your baby may appreciate the water birth experience as well, as entering into a water pool of water could be a less traumatic transition from being in the womb, than entering into the air.
Time Frame
The relaxing effect of a water birth also helps to speed up the birthing process by minimizing the energy you use by being tense, leaving more energy for your womb to use to birth the baby. Also, being able to move into a comfortable position easily will help the baby to arrive sooner, as the most comfortable position for the mother is often the position that allows the baby to move through the pelvis the easiest. Your birth may also take less time in water because of the increased chance that you will be upright, allowing gravity to help move things along, according to BabyCenter.com. Sometimes a woman's time in the water is cut short. Women whose baby's heartbeat shows that there is a problem will be asked to get out of the pool. Women whose labor is progressing slowly or who request pain medication will also have to leave the water. Feeling faint and bleeding during labor are also reasons a woman would have to get out of the water.
Labor Warnings
You may be at risk for infection from any number of factors that come into play when laboring in water. The pool, the pipes that lead into and out of the pool and having a bowel movement in the pool all can present a risk of infection. You may feel disappointed if you find that the warm water is not doing enough to help you cope with the pain, and you have to get out of the water to receive pain medication. Laboring in water also means that there may be a delay when an emergency arises since it will take you some time to get out of the water.
Delivery Warnings
You may wonder about the chance of your baby breathing in water before they are brought to the surface of the pool. Janet Balaskas, an authority on waterbirth, says that a baby only starts to breath when he feels air on his skin. An increased risk of a snapped umbilical cord is associated with water birth when the baby is pulled to the water's surface to be placed on the mother's chest. However, doctor's are advised not to pull on the cord while trying to get the baby to the mother.
Consideratons
Some women do not make good candidates for water birth. These include women who have previously had a c-section, had their labor induced, experienced bleeding near the end of their pregnancy or women whose baby hasn't been growing well, according to BabyCenter.com. Women who has pre-eclampsia, active herpes sores, pethidine or a similar drug during their labor, high blood pressure or certain other medical problems. Some women can't have water births, such as women who are having twins, whose baby is in the breech position, who are giving birth prematurely or whose pushing stage is taking too long.
