BENEFITS AND RISKS OF WATER LABOR/BIRTH Advantages for Mother • Safer, more effective and economical than an epidural • Waterbirth coined as an "aquadural" or "wetepidural" • Pain significantly reduced by blocking nerve impulses of pain to the brain known as the Gate Theory of Pain • Study in Canada; 100% women who birthed in water use no pain medication • Less use of analgesics and anesthesia • Fewer birth canal injuries, vagina, perineum and vulva • Reduction of labor length • Reduction of episiotomies and painful stitching, water relaxes the pelvic floor muscles • Decreases maternal hypertension, high blood pressure • Increases maternal connection over labor and birth environment • Increases maternal autonomy • Greater mobility for maternal positioning during labor and birth • Conservation of maternal energy • Better focus and concentration in water • Less blood loss during the birth • Deeper relaxation resulting in hormones kicking in • Less pressure on the abdomen because of the buoyancy promoting more efficient contractions, better blood circulation, more oxygen to baby and mother, equal pressure on all parts of the woman's body. • Helps to relieve anxiety and promote focusing inward, as labor becomes more intense • Moist air assist better breathing for mother specifically if asthmatic   • Facilitates a dysfunctional labor by stimulating dilation of cervix • Can speed up normal labors, sometimes resulting in less than a two to four-hour birth in total • Many experience more rapid second stage with baby emerging within a few pushes, also known as the 'fetus ejection reflex' (term by Dr. Michel Odent) • Effective tool to easing the woman into and through transition to pushing • More trust in the process by feeling of weightlessness allows woman to concentrate on letting her body do what it was designed to do • Water labor or birth can result in lower adrenaline, (fight or flight response) levels • Warm water stops false labor contractions • Assists pushing to an easier place • Reaching another state of consciousness where fears and resistances are released or dissolved • Sound of water running or the jets on belly or back create more endorphin secretion • Clean up is easier with less mess • Empowering experience for mother without drugs, no surgical procedure, moving in any position, developing inner strength and power enriching her life forever • Family relationships empowered with mother in less pain; father takes more active role in birth experience resulting in deeper bonding and a more enhanced relationship the rest of their lives • Parent-child interactions are enhanced by a positive experience in her body/mind/spirit, less painful, gentle approach in bringing child to the planet • Reduction of Cesareans • Mother or father can more readily catch her baby • Bacteria is dissipated in water reducing infection to mother   Advantages for Baby • Easier more gentle transition from one womb of water to an external womb of water, weightless, warm, wet and soft • Decreased trauma at birth • More blood to baby due to better blood circulation in mother • Baby doesn't receive the invasive stimuli to induce breathing, which results in less crying, babies after birth resulting in a calmer, more alert state • More safe than unsafe alternative in childbirth • Bacteria is dissipated in the water reducing infection to baby • Cord cutting after birth is delayed until it stops pulsating • Less problems with breastfeeding after birth • Less trauma to mother means less trauma to baby • Babies brought into a world with less violence have a greater potential to integrate into the world with less violence