Water Birth

Water birth is a method of giving birth in a bathtub or pool full of warm water. Proponents believe this method has many favourable effects for the mother and infant and is a safe alternative to other ways of delivery.

The use of water for labor and birth in is a reasonably recent phenomenon in Western culture. The Russian researcher Igor Tjarkovsky undertook considerable work during the 1960s into the safety and benefits of waterbirth in the USSR. Frederick Leboyer in the late 1960s undertook work in France on the value of immersing newly born babies in warm water as a way of acclimatizing them from the move from the womb to the outside world and mitigating any possible birth trauma. Another Frenchman, the obstetrician Michel Odent took Leboyer's work further and used the warm water birth pool for pain relief and as a way to normalize the birth process. When women refused to get out of the water to give birth to their baby, Odent started researching the benefits and potential problems about the baby being born under water. By the late 1990s, thousands of women had given birth at Odent's birth centre at Pithiviers and the notion of water birth had spread to many other western countries. Waterbirth first came to the United States through couples giving birth at Home births simply because many hospitals do not have proper birth pools in their labour wards.

In the US, Barbara Harper, a nurse and childbirth educator, has explored waterbirth throughout the world and chronicaled the history and current use of waterbirth in dozens of countries in her book, "Gentle Birth Choices." An extensive bibliography of this research can be seen at Waterbirth International'