I have always thought it looked great and would love to try it.
Now that i am pregnant i am really considering it. Although my midwife said it is not available at this moment she said maybe in January when they get a new head of the department they will start letting them experiment with it.

not that i want to be the first but by the time i am due in June they might of had lots of experiences with it. Or there is an option of going to a different hospital that does it regularly. But i would hate to switch.

Have any of you heard about it or have done it.
I had my daughter natually and it was a very quick labor. So i believe i would be a canidate. I spent the last hour of labor in a hot tub in my birthing room and it was so nice in there. So why not just have the baby in there, it would of been great.

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I only labored in water and it actually didn't work well for me. I think it can be really hard to predict what will actually feel good for that birth. It would be good to have the option available though. I hope your hospital goes for it.

Beth

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ds #1 6/02 and ds #2 12/07

I labored in a birth tub with my second, but then got out to take a nap (or so I thought!). A few minutes later, while lying in bed, I felt the urge to push. Ten minutes later, he was born. No time to get back in the tub, and by then the water had cooled off anyway. I hadn't really researched the topic anyway, so it wasn't a priority to me.

Third baby, I said that if I was in the tub when it came time to push, I'd stay there, (because I couldn't imagine physically being able to climb out at that point!) Ten minutes after getting to the birth center, I was in the tub. Ten minutes later, I was pushing. But I was surprised to find that while the tub had been just what I needed during transition, I was very uncomfortable pushing in that position. (This was a jacuzzi, so not a lot of options for positions.) So I did something that beforehand I never thought would've been possible....in between contractions I just climbed out of the tub and walked into the other room to use a birth chair. (It's amazing what a laboring woman can do between contractions!) The chair was just what I needed and I birthed him there about 20 minutes later.

A year later I became a doula and started attending water births. I couldn't believe what a peaceful, gentle entrance to the world it was! Once I saw my first water birth, I regretted not staying in the tub with my previous two births and vowed my next one would be born in water. This time I was staying home and rented a big birth tub. (About 5 feet across....big enough to get in any position a mom could possibly want to get in.) It also had a built-in heater so we didn't have to worry about the water cooling off. I told my doula that if I got in and out of the tub during labor, that when she thought pushing was imminent, she should remind me to get back in the tub. (Or if I thought it was uncomfortable like happened with my third, that she should suggest some other positions or comfort messages that didn't include me getting out of the tub.)

Well she didn't need to remind me! I labored in the tub, in the shower, in the bed, on the floor, you name it. I was on my knees, leaning into my recliner, with my doula rubbing my back, when I felt the baby drop. I said "I'm going to be pushing soon; I need to get in the tub." So I did. Had a few more contractions, then pushed him out. When just his head was out, his eyes were open and he was looking around! It was so peaceful and beautiful, I would never choose to do it another way!

You can never "re-do" your child's entrance into the world, so I encourage you to decide what's important to you and then do what you need to do to achieve it. If that means changing birth location or care providers, then so be it. No one cares about your birth as much as you do! Happy birthing...

Laroka
P.S.--You might want to check out Waterbirth International's website....www.waterbirth.org (or com--can't remember at the moment!)