Childbirth

Water Delivery Method of Childbirth

Waterbirthing is a birth that takes place in a sterile pool or birthing tub full of warm water with favorable effects for both the mother and the baby, being a safe alternative to other traditional or natural birthing methods of delivery.

Although, Water Delivery Method of Childbirth is a reasonably recent phenomenon in the Western Hemisphere , the Russian researcher Igor Tjarkovsky studied the benefits of waterbirth in the USSR during the 1960's. Other physicians and researchers investigated the safety of this method, including the French obstetrician Frédérick LeBoyer in his earlier works about the value of immersing newborns in warm water, resembling the amniotic fluid.

This way of acclimatizing babies moving from the womb to the outside world was taken later by another Frenchman, the obstetrician Michel Odent. Odent was the first using a warm water birth pool for pain relief, but not as a method itself. After many cases of women refusing to get out of the water to give birth, research began on the benefits and problems of water delivery.

Later, Water Delivery Method of Childbirth was named “The Gentle Birth Method", after the publication of the homonym book written by Dr Gowri Motha, a physician who has worked as an obstetrician in London since 1981, exploring for over 20 years alternatives to conventional obstetric practice.

Her method is aimed to prepare pregnant women for birth, including emotional preparation, physical preparation, and mental preparation, in order to eliminate common pregnancy ailments such as back pain, nausea, heartburn, and pelvic edema, while reducing the anxiety and fear of labor to deliver the baby under the water.

Dr Motha's principle is encouraging the baby into the best birthing position, preventing vaginal tearing, managing the contractions efficiently and controlling the pain. Water Delivery Method is able to bond a mother with her baby more deeply with a strong likelihood of a shorter, intervention free labor.

This technique is also taught to practitioners worldwide at the Saint John and Elizabeth 's Hospital in north London , where Dr Motha has a birthing unit. Considerable research has been undertaken into the safety of this method, particularly from two of the most prolific researchers in Waterbirthing, Dr. Michel Odent and the American obstetrician Dr. Michael Rosenthal.

There are still some concerns regarding the Water Delivery Method of Childbirth, more likely because this is an innovative and unusual idea. Although, it is accepted that there is a minuet risk in which the baby can drown if it is raised to the surface after the birth and then re-immersed. Health care practitioners and midwives are aware of this risk and once the baby is brought to the surface, they place the baby straight on the mother's breast to feed instead of re-immersed in the water.