My second daughter was born at home via water delivery. Today is her three-month birthday. Today I rejoice in her magical birth.
I had planned a water birth at home from the very beginning. I knew that having a water birth would probably be the best thing for me to do, and I was very excited about it. I only wish that I had delivered my first in the same way, but being a young first time mother, it wasn’t something that I knew enough about. In the almost five years before becoming pregnant again, I had come across the concept on my own and immediately knew that it was for me.
To be perfectly honest, I can’t imagine that there is any woman that water birth isn’t for. It is true that most hospitals and birth centers do not allow actual water deliveries, but most maternity wards are noticing the trend and getting tubs for their labor and delivery rooms. This is a Godsend for the laboring woman. Water immersion has the effect of dispersing pressure on a laboring woman, thus dispersing pain as well. Being in the water made me feel weightless, and I would refer to the sensation of that as fluid pain relief.
I spent much of my labor sleeping in between contractions in my bed, breathing through them along to the rhythms of a sound machine set on “waves”. When it was too intense to sleep through my labor anymore, I awoke and began to move around a bit, only to realize that the only thing that was keeping my body from expelling the baby in my sleep was that the lack of movement was slowing my labor. Therefore when I became mobile, it threw my contractions into over-drive. It was as if they immediately had to play catch-up, and quite literally doubled in intensity. Caught off-guard, we rushed to fill the tub. I didn’t want to miss the ability to have the birth of my dreams. The tub was half-way full when I got in.
Water is very forgiving – it lifted my body just as it lifts giant icebergs, completely releasing the tension in my back. The difference between contracting with your back against a hard bed or other surface and being supported by water is incomparable. I had bad “back labor “in my first labor, and there was no such thing in the water. Still using the waves on the sound machine to coordinate my breathing during contractions, I inhaled deep and then blew my air out long and hard, pushing away the pain with the strength of my breath. In-between contractions I joked that I felt like I was at the beach: Wearing a bikini and a beach skirt, lounging in the water, the sound of waves rushing in the background.
I pushed out Arwen Vada at 9:26 a.m. on October 27th, 2006. Her father, her sister, and I greeted her with open arms. Happy three-month birthday, Vada! You gave me my dream birth.
Read more about this birth on my homepage at Lanugo/Let’s Talk
Tell me about your water birth! Or, are you planning a water birth? Tell us about your decision here, or ask questions if you have any.
See also:
Let’s Talk About Sharing Our Birth Stories!
The Let’s Talk Blog Top Ten – Ways to Achieve a Normal Birth
Let’s Talk About the Cultures of Childbearing