Most peo­ple find great com­fort and re­pose with wa­ter. Per­haps be­cause we be­gin our lives sur­round­ed in liq­uid in the womb, this ba­sic fa­mil­iar­i­ty stays with us through­out our lives. Hu­man be­ings are com­prised pri­mar­i­ly of wa­ter. A three-day old foe­tus is 97 per cent wa­ter, and at eight months the foe­tus is 81 per cent wa­ter. By the time a hu­man has grown to adult­hood, the adult body is still 50 to 70 per cent wa­ter, de­pend­ing on the amount of fat­ty tis­sue. Soak­ing in a tub of wa­ter to ease labour sounds invit­ing to most women. And for women who find wa­ter sooth­ing and com­fort­able dur­ing labour, they usu­al­ly want to give birth in wa­ter.

How­ev­er, labour­ing in wa­ter does more than mere­ly re­lax and com­fort the woman. Rest­ing in a warm tub of wa­ter ac­tu­al­ly fa­cil­i­tates the pro­gres­sion of the lat­ter stages of labour. Many women re­port a sen­sa­tion like an en­er­gy surge that moves through them as soon as they step in­to the wa­ter. While a woman in labour re­lax­es in a warm pool, free from grav­i­ty's pull on her body, and with sen­so­ry stim­u­la­tion re­duced, her body is less like­ly to se­crete stress-re­lat­ed hor­mones. This al­lows her body to pro­duce the pain-in­hibitors, en­dor­phins, that com­pli­ment labour. The hor­mones that are re­leased dur­ing stress, no­ra­drene­line and cat­e­cholamines, ac­tu­al­ly raise the blood pres­sure and can in­hib­it or slow labour.

Be­ing more re­laxed phys­i­cal­ly, a labour­ing woman is able to re­lax men­tal­ly. Many women, mid­wives and doc­tors ac­knowl­edge the anal­gesic ef­fect of wa­ter.

One ob­stet­ri­cal nurse who had a wa­ter­birth, de­scribed sit­ting in a tub of warm wa­ter dur­ing labour as sim­i­lar to "get­ting a shot of de­merol, but with­out the side ef­fects." Oth­ers have re­ferred to the pool in labour as "a wetepidur­al." Women achieve a lev­el of com­fort in the wa­ter that in turn re­duces their lev­els of fear and stress. Women's per­cep­tion of pain is great­ly in­flu­enced by their lev­els of anx­i­ety. When labour be­comes phys­i­cal­ly eas­i­er, a woman's abil­i­ty to calm­ly con­cen­trate is im­proved, and she is able to fo­cus in­ward on the birth process­es. Wa­ter helps some women reach a state of con­scious­ness in which their fear and re­sis­tance are di­min­ished or re­moved com­plete­ly; then their bod­ies re­lax, and their ba­bies are born in the eas­i­est way pos­si­ble.

Moth­ers feel not on­ly re­lief, and al­though ex­haust­ed, they of­ten feel ex­hil­a­rat­ed, ec­sta­t­ic and de­light­ed from hav­ing the full birth ex­pe­ri­ence in such a won­der­ful way, and know­ing the ba­by al­so has ex­pe­ri­enced lit­tle or no trau­ma. Doc­tors and mid­wives who at­tend wa­ter­births find that the mere sight and sound of wa­ter pour­ing in­to the tub helps some women re­lease what­ev­er in­hi­bi­tions were slow­ing the birth, at times so quick­ly that the birth oc­curs even be­fore the pool is filled. Of­ten times women get in the pool to la­bor and the birth hap­pens be­fore they can get out of the pool. An­oth­er ben­e­fit of wa­ter­birth is the elas­tic­i­ty that wa­ter im­parts to the tis­sues of the per­ineum, re­duc­ing the in­ci­dents and sever­i­ty of tear­ing and the need for painful stitch­es or epi­siotomies.

The ease of the moth­er who labours and gives birth in wa­ter be­comes the ease of the child who is born in the wa­ter, as well. Their body re­spons­es are in­tri­cate­ly linked. While the child is in the womb and when he is pass­ing through the birth canal, the moth­er's ex­pe­ri­ence in­flu­ences the child's ex­pe­ri­ence. The emo­tions the moth­er feels can al­so be felt by the child be­cause the hor­mones her body se­cretes in re­sponse to her emo­tions are ab­sorbed by the child. In a med­ical­ly con­trolled birth, any drugs or syn­thet­ic hor­mones that the moth­er re­ceives would al­so be re­ceived by the child. If the moth­er's de­liv­ery is easy and smooth, so too is the child's birth.

The ba­by emerges in­to the wa­ter and is "caught" ei­ther by the moth­er her­self or the birth at­ten­dant. In the wa­ter, the child has free­dom of move­ment with­in fa­mil­iar flu­id sur­round­ings. A ba­by's limbs can al­so un­fold with greater ease dur­ing those first mo­ments when he leaves his moth­er's body and en­ters the wa­ter. The wa­ter of­fers a fa­mil­iar com­fort af­ter the stress of the birth, re­as­sur­ing the child and al­low­ing his bod­i­ly sys­tems time to or­gan­ise. Dur­ing the birth ba­bies of­ten open their eyes, move in all di­rec­tions and use their limbs. The shock and sen­so­ry over­load which are so of­ten an in­ex­tri­ca­ble part of birth are mit­i­gat­ed. (Child­birth So­lu­tions Inc.)