Natural Birthing

Tweet

by Barbara Harper, RN Waterbirth is simple. Within the simplicity of water labor and birth lies a complexity of questions, choices, opinions, research data, women’s experience and practitioner observations. Over the past five years, as more hospitals within the United States examined waterbirth and created programs to support the use of water for labor and birth, newspaper reporters latched onto the sensationalism of this simple option and published stories of successful waterbirths in local publications. Reporters do their best to simplify waterbirth and at the same time answer the most common questions. Each story shows a happy, beaming mother, a quiet, peaceful baby and a proud father, who usually successfully [...]

Tweet

Why is water birth not available in more hospitals? Waterbirth International works diligently with couples who want to use warm water during their births in a hospitals. We have been very successfully with obtaining approvals for our portable pools in many hospitals in the last ten years. Hospitals are more cooperative today than ever before as doctors and midwives begin to see the benefits of allowing women to make their own choices. Waterbirth profoundly demonstrates that a woman is empowered by “giving birth,” not “being delivered”. Many health care providers are seeing women take charge of their birth experiences and welcome this attitude and do what they can to facilitate [...]

Tweet

by Elena Vladirimova In 1982 I was working closely with the Waterbirth pioneer Igor Charkovsky in Russia. The idea to place laboring women in the water came to him in 1963 when he was looking for the ways to relieve a baby’s brain from the shock of gravity. He considered this the main reason why the human brain is not fully available for our use. He states that whales and dolphins have a much better use of their brains, on levels unreachable for humans, because they are not exposed to gravity shock at birth. As proof of their higher intelligence and superior use of their brain, Charkovsky points out that [...]