Birthing pools ease need for pain relief
By Ruth Pollard, Health Reporter January 27, 2004
Women were less likely to need pain relief during labour if they used a birthing pool, British researchers have found.
Experts say the findings, published on the British Medical Journal website, could influence Australian practice, where only a small number of childbirths occur in water.
Comparing 99 first-time mothers experiencing slow progress in labour, half were immersed in a birthing pool during the first stage of labour.
Of the 49 women in the water group, half needed an epidural, compared with two-thirds of the 50 women in the other group, the researchers from Southampton University found.
It also found immersion in water helped to relieve pain and anxiety and reduced the need for medical intervention or drugs to aid their contractions.
The head of policy research at Britain's National Childbirth Trust, Mary Newburn, said the results emphasised the importance of providing birthing pools in all public maternity units.
However, some experts were concerned water births might increase the risks to the baby.
Kat El Karout, clinical nurse specialist in the birth centre at the Royal Hospital for Women and Children, told the Herald birthing in a pool was not commonplace in Australia.
"Women have to come to a specialised birth unit to even have it as an option in Australia," Mrs El Karout said. The practice of putting women in water when their labour had slowed was also very different to Australian practice, which involved taking women out of the water and having them walk around, she said.
The study's results were enough to make practitioners at the Royal Women's consider a change in practice, Mrs El Karout said. "It is based on a small sample of women, but it would make us think again about the way to best manage a slow labour."
A high percentage of women who attended the Royal Women's hospital birth centre chose water birth - 41 per cent - and up to 80 per cent of those who gave birth at the hospital used water at some stage during their labour for pain relief, Mrs El Karout said.
"It is a spiral with intervention, so if you can reduce even getting onto that slippery slope then you increase the chance of having a normal birth with no intervention," she said.
"Women feel more in control in the water, there is less need for pain relief and [it is] easier for the baby."
----- Andrea Robertson Birth International * ACE Graphics * Associates in Childbirth Education
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] web: www.birthinternational.com
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