WATER BIRTH
First introduced in the 1960s, water birth is believed to be safe as well as providing many benefits for the mother and her baby. The method of giving birth in the water supposedly makes the infants entrance to the world smoother and less traumatic, not to mention provides incredible pain relief to the mother as she is in labor.
Benefits and risks
There has been considerable research into the safety of water birth. While some critics argue that water birth brings an unnecessary risk to the baby, like infection and water inhalation, others believe that there are no risks to water birth, only benefits for both mother and baby. Because childbirth is hard on the baby, it is believed that water that is properly heated will help to ease the transition from the mothers birth canal to the outside world because of the waters resemblance to the environment the baby has lived inside of the womb for the preceding nine months.
A few of the benefits of water birth are pain management and a decreased chance of episiotomy or a torn perineum. Water is thought to help the perineum stretch, which decreases the risk of tears during deliver, and the support from the water offers perineal support by causing the crowning of the babys head to slow down. In water birth research, the episiotomy rate is nonexistent, and perineal damage is overall less severe than birth outside of the water. And because water birth is considered hydrotherapy, which is shown to be an effective form of pain management for various conditions, it is commonly reported that water birth helps women manage the pain of the labor and delivery process. The hydrotherapy involved in water births is also considered a safer alternative than epidural anesthesia during labor, which increases the risk of a forceps or vacuum assisted delivery and chances of a Cesarean section surgery. Being fully immersed in water helps the mothers body to redistribute blood and stimulate oxytocin and vasopressin release.
The majority of the concerns of water birth are dismissed by the positive research done in countless studies, with the only critical opinions stemming from poorly managed or unmonitored water births that neglect to cite any evidence. While infection is the most commonly discussed concern, there are no instances of bacteria gathered in the birth pool itself, especially with the extreme protocols for cleaning birthing tubs between labors. In fact, even babies that tested positive for common bacteria found in tap water didnt need treatment for an infection.
Documented cases do show that laboring in water can slow the labor process by decreasing the intensity of the mothers contractions. Therefore, most hospitals and facilities where water birth is allowed make a woman wait until she is dilated to 5 centimeters before she can get into the water birth tub.
History of water birth
Water birth first began being researched by Igor Charkovsky, a Russian researcher, in the 1960s in the Soviet Union. He believed water birth was completely safe and provided many benefits to the mother and her baby. Later that decade, French obstetrician Frederick Leboyer used warm water to immerse a newly born infant as a practice of easing the transition from the mothers womb to the outside world, thus eliminating the effects of any traumatic birth procedures. Michel Odent, another French obstetrician, took the practice even further by using a warm water birth pool as a way to relieve the mothers pain and normalize the birth process. He was the first to study the positive and negative effects on babies who were actually delivered in the water after women who labored in warm water birth pools refused to get out of the water to deliver the newborn. By the late 1990s, the idea of water birth had spread to Western civilization and thousands of women had given birth at Odents birthing center at Pithiviers, a commune in France.
Water birth became a practice in the United States when couples gave birth at home and it was soon introduced to hospitals and freestanding birth centers by obstetricians and midwives. The first hospital to create a protocol for giving birth in water was Monadnock Community Hospital in Peterborough, New Hampshire, in 1991, and more than 9,000 U.S. hospitals had adopted similar protocols by the year 2005.
