It was just a big bath, really, a sort of dirty Elastoplast colour, with a visible plug and lots of taps. It smelled of NHS hospital rather than clary sage; the hot water ran out at one point; there weren't any candles; and certainly not any whale music, because I'd brought along my own tape of several omnibus editions of The Archers. I'm more a narrative sort of person.
But it worked. I was a first-time mother about to turn 35 giving birth to a 4kg (9lb) posterior (wrong side up) baby with an outsize head. Any one of those factors could have easily landed me with forceps at the very least. Instead, I popped him out underwater, swathed in cinematic scarfs of blood, just within the NHS-approved time limit. I had a first-degree tear but it healed in a few days. And the birth didn't hurt - or rather, it hurt a lot, but never beyond bearing. I never felt frightened.
Was all this the magic of water? I'm not sure. There was a wonderful feeling of relaxation when I stepped into the pool: on the other hand, the gas and air was fab, too. What the bath mostly did was make me feel safe: it felt natural to be naked there, and private. The water supported me in an upright position, and that felt right for labour. I was also safe from excessive internal examinations (which I hate and didn't stop hating just because I was in labour) and from strap-on, strap-you-down foetal monitors, which very often lead to intervention. The hospital midwives I encountered were enthusiastic and supportive: I think the water protects them from excess testing and supervision, too.
But I don't think the doctors felt the same way. A vast fuss was made over my stitches: feet in stirrups, the midwife pushed to the corner, different medical personnel coming in and out and tutting at her. "You should have had a cut," I was told baldly, and no more words of sympathy were offered, and, in what I can only describe as a revenge attack, I was stitched up without anaesthetic. I was very frightened.
The trauma of that event eliminated my memory of the birth for a while. On the whole, though, I loved my water birth and am planning to do it again. But I think it's the privacy, the empowered midwives, the sense of safety and the lack of interference that the pool allowed me which are the keys to a good birth, rather than the water itself. And there are other places you can find those things. Your home, for example, or a comfortable bed.
