August 20, 2004

Floating into life

By Amara Rose
For the Tidings

In a region replete with hot springs and spas of every description, there's another creative way to utilize the healing power of water: a home water birth. Women who birth their babies in water lend a whole new meaning to the phrase, "go with the flow."

Nursing midwives like Linda Lieberman of Ashland are now helping a growing population of parents who want their child to be birthed underwater File photo | Ashland Daily Tidings

While water births have been gaining popularity in the United States for the past few decades, the concept isn't new. The first recorded water birth took place in 1803 in France, when a woman who had been in labor for forty-eight hours climbed into a tub of warm water to relax. Her baby was born shortly afterward.

In the 1960s, Russian scientist Igor Charcovsky began experimenting with the use of warm water immersion to see how it affected labor, birth, and newborn behavior. In the 1970s, Michel Odent, M.D., opened a water birth clinic in France. During the same period, some families in both North America and Russia chose to birth in the warm waters of the Caribbean and Black Seas, respectively. Interest in the idea of birthing in water gradually spread around the world.

Here in Ashland, certified nurse midwife/nurse practitioner Linda Lieberman, who has been a fixture on the local home birth scene since 1987, began offering water births in the 1990s.

"I knew water birth was an emerging practice among home birthing families and home birth practitioners," says Lieberman. She's attended births in tents and tipis, trailers and yurts, and while she's quite comfortable with unusual settings and circumstances, customizing birth in the home is her specialty - and passion.

"Bringing a child into the world is an experience that deserves our efforts to make it unique and authentic," she says. "It's important for each family to consider how miraculous and individual their birth experience will be, and to find a provider who will honor their choices."

Why does water work so well as a birth medium? One of the biggest blessings for expectant mothers is that it reduces pain. Immersion in water close to 98 degrees (body temperature is 98.6) relaxes muscles in the pelvis and vagina and improves blood flow to all parts of the body, so there is usually no need for medication.

Water birthing also enables the baby to transition into life peacefully. Babies often do not cry, says Lieberman, or they cry briefly and then stop.

"They come into their bodies more easily."

This relaxed transition facilitates bonding between mother and child, because the water is similar to the baby's natural environment of the previous nine months.

Finally, home water births are cost effective, no small issue considering the high medical premiums charged for managed care.

"A major benefit of using water for labor and/or birth is the reduction in the use of epidural anesthesia and narcotic medication, which is administered frequently in hospital labors, and can pass to the baby before birth," Lieberman explains.

The cost for an epidural at Anesthesia Associates in Medford, for example, is $700 per injection - if the patient has Blue Cross/Blue Shield health insurance. If she uses another insurance provider, anesthesia costs are generally calculated by the hour, and can run as high as $3,000 if labor is long.

Then there's the cost of the hospital stay itself. An overnight stay in the birthing center at Rogue Valley Medical Center runs $6,500.

Fortunately, water births are catching on, even in hospitals. Ashland Community Hospital offers water birth, currently only with physicians.

Lieberman encourages the families who contact her to "invest in water" for their labor and birth at home. Her system includes a $20 "Ocean Reef" kiddie pool that can comfortably accommodate a woman and her partner, a high quality hose to bring pure hot water for keeping the pool warm, and a tarp to protect the floors in the home. The pool she uses is baffled, meaning that the cushioned air pocket design enhances comfort. However, she adds, births certainly can and do take place in the bathtub. She has assisted at a number of water births right in the client's bathroom.

Lieberman is somewhat unusual among nurse midwives/nurse practitioners in that she maintains an independent practice. Most nurse midwives today, she notes, opt to work in a hospital setting or in tandem with physicians. The need for Siskiyou Women's Health Care is evident, however: one pregnant woman traveled from Montana last year in order to birth with Lieberman, whom she located through the Internet.