Pregnant women are faced with an array of choices when it comes to delivering their new bundles of joy.
Here we look one of their options – water birth.
Water birth is one of the newer options of giving birth that is gaining more popularity.
Hettie Grové, midwife and breast feeding expert at St Mary’s explains water birth is when the mother stays inside a bath of water while giving birth.
The baby is brought to the surface after being born.
Most of the women giving birth inside a water bath say afterwards it was different from having a baby on a bed, because they felt more in control, relaxed, a relief from pain, warmth, buoyancy, and experienced the water as calming.
Hettie says women decide on water birth for several reasons, including:
- There is less instrument assistance at birth.
- Women advised to give birth in water have a higher rate of spontaneous vaginal births.
- The C-section rates of women giving birth in water are also lower.
- Women experience lower incidences in vaginal tearing and there is less trauma to their perineal area.
- Water birth labours are shorter because the women relax more inside the water.
- There is a lower incidence of bleeding.
She says the mothers are not medicated and may feel lighter in the water because the water causes buoyancy.
This buoyancy and the fact that the mother has no pain medication eases the women’s movement and position changes inside the water.
Hettie says a woman may at any time request to get out of the bath if there are risks to her or her child, if the labour is progressing slowly, or it there are variations in the baby’s heart rate.
She says water birth is not for everyone.
Some cases where this type of birth will not be considered, are:
- If the mother has high blood pressure, because there is currently no research to monitor the effect of the water on a mother’s high blood pressure.
- Women with a high body mass index, because it may be more difficult to help a heavy mother out of the tub in case of an emergency.
- The birth of twins and breech-babies.
