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