For several days now, women giving birth at the Gynecology and Obstetrics Clinical Hospital in Poznań have been able to deliver their babies in a special birthing pool.
Hospital staff say the new option has attracted strong interest from expectant mothers, with several babies already born in water and more patients being assessed for the procedure.
Twice a month, after prior registration, expectant mothers can visit the delivery suite, including the water birth room.
During these visits, midwives show them around and answer questions about how the new option works in practice.
Water 'helps ease labour' pain
A water birth is a delivery in which the mother spends the final stages of labour, and often the actual birth, in a pool of warm water.
Doctors and midwives at the hospital say the method can be a safe alternative to a traditional delivery on a bed, provided that women meet medical criteria.
Dr. Tomasz Piekarski, who heads the hospital’s delivery ward, said water can make contractions easier to bear and help the body work with labour rather than against it.
In his words, warm water "helps ease labour contractions and relaxes the muscles" in the first and second stages of birth.
He stressed that not every patient can use this method and that each woman must first be assessed.
Among the reasons to exclude a water birth, he listed preterm labour, high blood pressure and bleeding during pregnancy.
According to Piekarski, water also gives women more freedom of movement during labour. In the pool, he said, they can choose positions that feel most comfortable, which is often harder on a standard delivery bed.
Midwife Iwona Marczak from the delivery ward said many women who give birth in water need fewer painkillers or manage without them.
She described water as having a natural pain-relieving effect. One important benefit, she added, is that "many patients deliver without the need for an episiotomy," which is a surgical cut made to widen the birth canal.
'Birth can be beautiful'
One of the first women to use the new option, identified only as Ania, gave birth in water to her second child, a boy named Bruno.
She told reporters that her first delivery had been difficult, but this time her experience was very different.
She said she had once thought it an exaggeration when women called childbirth beautiful, but now felt able to say "birth can be beautiful," adding that the support of "wonderful midwives" had been crucial.
The clinic currently has one birthing room equipped for water births, according to reports.
Because of the level of interest, hospital staff say they may create more such rooms in the future.
(rt/gs)
Source: polskieradio24.pl, PAP, wp.pl