Ma Nan, a 27-year-old local teacher, was the first to try waterbirth at the hospital on March 1.

Now her 24-year-old friend, a woman surnamed Zhang, wants to follow in Ma’s footsteps.

“I got to know Ma at a training class for pregnant women and we became friends. Since she chose waterbirth and delivered the baby so successfully, I also want to follow her.”

The birth will take place in a semicircular tub with the woman lying in about one meter of water. According to doctors, the tub is filled with hot, disinfected water, in which the mother to be sit during labor.

“Being in water during labor can be very soothing,” said the hospital’s head nurse, who would only giver her surname, Lin.

“Once the woman settles into the warm water, her contractions hurt less and she finds little need for medication. With decreased pain experienced, she will feel less anxious and her adrenalin levels also decrease,” said Lin. “Because muscles are supported in the water, a woman becomes less tense and can cope with the contractions easier.”

Medical staff also says women who deliver their babies in water lose less blood and deliver the baby quicker than normal.

The warm water is also helpful for the baby to adapt to the outside world, as it grows in the fluid-filled environment of the womb, doctors said.

Waterbirths have been around for decades in the West, but have never gained large popularity.

Other maternity hospitals in Shanghai question whether their is enough demand for the service to set up a waterbirth delivery room and also fear that it can cause infections if the water and tub are not properly disinfected.

“Delivering a baby in water requires strict disinfection of the water and the facility. Since the woman is so vulnerable when delivering, the water can result in serious consequence if it is not clean enough. In addition, we don’t think many Chinese women and their families will choose waterbirth,” said a spokes-woman for Shanghai International Peace Maternity and Child Health Hospital.  (source = eastday.com March 11, 2003)

Women who are seeking water birth and undisturbed birth have usually considered the consequences of interference with the birth process. They may have read about the impact of early childhood trauma, including birth trauma, on the developmental neurobiology, endocrinology, immunology, and epigenetics of this new human being (Karr-Morse, 2010). Many women are not just looking for pain relief but a way to remain drug-free, relaxed, and with some control over the process of letting the baby out. Over the past three decades, I have assisted hundreds of women in the birth pool. I have observed closely, listened carefully, and recorded many actions and characteristics in mothers and their caregivers. I have heard many caregivers and mothers retell their stories to friends, to families, and to their babies. More than 2,500 women have completed surveys about their water-birth experience through Waterbirth International, often using the same words to describe how their babies responded after birth and in the months and years that followed (Harper, 2008). Is it just the water that caused these babies to be alert, calm, responsive, connected, present, and aware? The use of warm water immersion aids and assists the mother in feeling calm, relaxed, nurtured, protected, and in control, with the ability to easily move as her body and her baby dictate. From the mother’s perspective, using water becomes the best way to enhance the natural process without any evidence of increased risk. A calm, relaxed mother is more likely to experience a calm, relaxed baby after birth. (source)

Immediately after birth, the cardiac output to the lungs must increase from the 8% level in fetal life to a 45% level necessary for neonatal life and adult circulation. Therefore, some of the blood from the fetal “lung,” the placenta, is needed by the neonatal lungs for draining of the fetal lung fluids and adequate expansion and recruitment of lung tissue. Immediate cord clamping eliminates the many benefits of placental transfusion and compromises lung expansion and function. The infant is left with only the blood that was in the body at the time of cord clamping, which is not adequate to create an increase in the circulatory bed at the same time that the infant’s organs (lung, liver, kidney, skin, gut, and brain) begin to assume the functions that had been sustained by the placenta during fetal life (Mercer, Vohr, Erickson-Owens, Padbury, & Oh, 2010). In other words, the more blood that flows from the placenta into the newborn, the higher the blood volume. The more blood volume and the thicker the blood, the more fluids are able to leave the lung tissue.

The many mechanisms that function to switch the newborn from fetal circulation to newborn status take place over the course of hours and sometimes days. Not all the fluids that were in the lungs prenatally are drawn out into the vascular circulation. The fluids that remain are drawn out of the lung tissue through the lymphatic system, which is stimulated over the following 72 hr by skin-to-skin placement, self-attachment, and breastfeeding.

One of the many benefits of water birth is immediate and uninterrupted skin-to-skin contact. Water-birth providers have learned so much from observing what normal full-term healthy newborns do in the habitat between the breasts. The neonate who is placed skin-to-skin regulates all his systems very quickly but is usually extremely quiet. The absence of vigorous crying is not indicative of the absence of newborn breathing. Quiet stable newborn breathing happens often without a single peep out of the baby who is immediately placed in the habitat (Moore, Anderson, & Bergman, 2007; Mori, Khanna, Pledge, & Nakayama, 2010). This is frequently observed of babies who are born in water. (source)

In 1960, Dr. Siegel published a study in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology entitled, “Does Bath Water Enter the Vagina?” Pregnant women were put into bathtubs that contained iodine-stained water. Before entering the bath, a sterile, starched white tampon, without a string, was inserted into the vagina. After 15 min of soaking, the women left the bath, the tampons were removed, and not a single one was stained with iodine. Common advice from physicians at that time was to avoid bathing in the third trimester and definitely to not bathe while in labor or after membranes have ruptured. Dr. Siegel concluded,

Thus, the fear that bath water may infect a pregnant or puerperal woman is not founded on fact, since normally no water enters the vagina. Therefore, restrictions on bathing during and after pregnancy are not warranted on this basis alone. Moreover, this teaching represents another classic example of error. (source)