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If you’re considering a natural pregnancy and birth, you’ll probably want to add home or birth center water birth to the list of topics you and your husband are studying. While this process of giving birth in a carefully controlled water tub has been slow to catch on in hospitals, more of them are offering this service to expectant mothers than ever before. This is largely because of the overwhelming benefits of a water birth for both mother and baby, which are listed below.

Pain Management

The decrease in delivery pain provided by a water birth is second only to a hospital’s epidural anesthesia, which means that it’s extremely effective in reducing mom’s pain. Having a water birth is a better way to control pain than using any type of pain medication (except the epidural), and it’s undoubtedly the healthiest way. So if you’re hesitant to use drugs or anesthesia during your birth process, rest assured that you can avoid these potential dangers while keeping your pain under control naturally.

Avoidance of Epidural Anesthesia

Many moms-to-be decide against epidural anesthesia for a variety of reasons. A lot of those reasons have to do with the negative effects of an epidural on both mother and baby, so having a home or birth center water birth will enable you to avoid these effects entirely. Here are some of the complications linked to epidurals, all of which are less likely to occur in water births:

• Decreased uterine function and longer births
• Increased rate of operative deliveries (c-sections and use of forceps or vacuum extraction)
• Unsuccessful positioning of the fetus for normal birth, most likely caused by the epidural’s tendency to impede the mother’s pelvic muscle function
• Mother’s hypotension (low blood pressure), which can cause a dangerously low fetal heart rate
• Mother’s fever during labor, which often results in antibiotic treatment and longer hospitalization for the baby
• Mother’s inability to move or walk during labor, feel contractions, know when to push, and help the birth process along by using pelvic muscles.

Decreased Potential for Tearing

Women who give birth in the water have fewer tears occurring during the birthing process. This results in fewer stitches and a faster recovery time after delivery. The decrease in tears is most likely due to the mother’s ability to relax more successfully in the water. 

Better Mobility & Relaxation for Mom

Even when a new mom has been pregnant for what seems like an endless number of months and has dealt with the difficulty of moving her larger body through space, water has the effect of helping her feel mobile, comfortable, and even graceful again. That “weightless” feeling that results from being partially submerged in water helps her move throughout labor and delivery, enabling her to provide more assistance to the baby moving through the birth canal. The relaxing effects of a warm bath also help mom to feel less pain and stress, making the birthing process more comfortable for her and the baby.

Faster Birth with Fewer Complications

In the end, having a water birth means fewer complications (like c-sections and other drastic interventions) and tends to speed up the delivery process naturally. Because mom can control her muscles and respond to her contractions without feeling as much pain as she would with a “dry” birth, she can provide more pushing force to help the baby emerge faster. A shorter labor and delivery period can mean less pain, stress, and recovery time – what mom wouldn’t want that?

If you’re considering a water birth, your next step is to find a local birth center that provides this service or a midwife and doula who can come to your home, then find out about the processes and policies involved for each option. This can help you decide for certain whether or not you’re interested in having a water birth. 

Bio: Maria Rainier is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education where she writes about education, online degrees, and what it takes to succeed as a student getting an online masters degree from home. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

Click here to read this great article about due dates and how the current thinking was developed.

This week in Family Circle we talked about intimacy. The family’s had asked to talk about sex, but I thought before talking about sex life after the baby, perhaps we should talk about intimacy first. We sometimes give sex and our sex life a lot of weight and consider that either we have a sex life or we don’t. That if we have sex, we have intimacy as a couple and if we don’t we don’t. And this is a measurement of our relationship.

What we challenged the families is to think of Areas of Intimacy, as gradients, or degrees, Continue Reading »

I just finished shooting the fundraising video for the Midwives and Mothers in Action Campaign. Visit the MAMA campaign website at www.mamacampaign.com. These are truly mothers in action! We all need to pull together to help Certified Professional Midwives get recognized on the federal level. We need to ensure that our sons and daughters have much greater access to midwifery care when they get older. Visit the MAMA Campaign website and become a Mother in Action. We need your help!

If you are enjoying a natural pregnancy and considering natural childbirth, you already believe in yourself. You want to give your child a safe and healthy start.

When you choose to have a natural pregnancy and childbirth you are choosing to play an important role in your own care, along side your chosen caregiver(s). With a midwife, you will have a wealth of resources to call upon to support each step of your pregnancy and birth, rather than being limited to medical intervention alone. The resources section of this Web site can help, too.

With the best options, knowledge, holistic care, and positive support you will be better suited to enable your body to do its work, and avoid unnecessary medical intervention. What more could you want for what you care about most?

Have you read a great book or seen a great childbirth movie lately that deserves recognition? Now you can nominate the most outstanding works for a unique award. At the 2009 MANA conference, Mother’s Naturally will award the second annual Mother’s Naturally awards! Anyone can nominate a book, movie, website, or blog they think represents excellence in the portrayal of natural childbirth and midwifery.

Nominations will be taken until August 31, and a committee will select the best to be awarded at the conference. Help us find the best of the best, and come to the conference to see who has been recognized!

E-mail your nominations to 2ndvp@mana.org.

One of the biggest obstacles to natural birth is misunderstanding your “due date.” A due date does not mean there is only one safe day for your baby to be born.

It is meant to establish a range of time that your baby is mature and safe to be born. Because modern obstetrics narrows this to a specific day, unnecessary interventions, like inducing labor, come into practice.

In a well-nourished, low risk pregnancy it is normal for your baby to be born between 37 and 42 weeks gestation. Many natural events take place within your body during the last weeks of pregnancy to prepare you for labor. Allow time for the natural process to occur.

Click here for a due date calculator!

America needs better birth care, and midwives can deliver it.
LA Times, December 24, 2008, by Jennifer Block

Some healthcare trivia: In the United States, what is the No. 1 reason people are admitted to the hospital? Not diabetes, not heart attack, not stroke. The answer is something that isn’t even a disease: childbirth.

Not only is childbirth the most common reason for a hospital stay — more than 4 million American women give birth each year — it costs the country far more than any other health condition. Six of the 15 most frequent hospital procedures billed to private insurers and Medicaid are maternity-related. The nation’s maternity bill totaled $86 billion in 2006, nearly half of which was picked up by taxpayers.

Continue Reading »

Stories of birth are as unique as each woman who bears her child and as universal as humankind.  Here each woman shares her experience in her own words, reflecting the collective wisdom of women and the aspects of her own birthing adventure.  We hope you will share your story of birth with Mothers Naturally.  For every child born, there is a mother with an amazing story of love to tell. Click here to share your story with our readers.