As I mentioned before we’re planning a home birth. A cool option when giving birth at home is water birth in a birth tub. Water has lots of benefits during the birth process including relaxation, greater comfort and mobility, reduction of pressure, energy conservation, pain minimalization, and reduced blood pressure among others. We picked up our birth tub from our midwife this week. It is important to do a “wet run” to ensure that everything works and to time how long it takes to fill up etc. So last night was the wet run and it went very well.

Here is the tub straight out of the bag.

Aaron plugging in the pump.

And presto in about 90 seconds we have a birth tub.  It is amazingly strong.  I can sit on the side of it and it holds my weight.

It was clean but I wanted to clean it out one more time.  Just so I knew it had been done to my satisfaction.  Sorry about the bare belly. I basically live with my shirt up at home these days, it is so much more comfortable.  I forgot that it was up when the pic was shot.

Prior to filling it up we realized that we’d forgotten to put the tarp down.  Oops.  Luckily we rememebered.  We didn’t need it, it’s more of a precaution.  Anyway it took about an hour and a half to fill up but we had the water running very slow so the water tank would have time to heat back up again.  In order to fill it up you just run a hose from the bathroom sink. 

Of course I had to get in and test it out!  Again sorry for the bare belly shot.  I know it doesn’t look like it but I am wearing a bathing suit on the lower half.

Plato was so curious.  He kept standing up on his hind legs so he could try to see what we were doing with this crazy blue contraption.

This was the first time during the pregnancy when i’ve been able to completely submerse in water.  It felt soooooooo good.  All of the pressure of carrying this big belly around was gone.  I could move easily and sit in positions I can’t do outside of water.  It was so relaxing!  Getting out was no fun.  I stood up and gravity set in.  I couldn’t believe how heavy my stomach felt afterwards.  The nice part is that the next time I get in hopefully there won’t be a baby in my belly anymore when I get out!

I bet your wondering how to get the water out.  It’s actually the easiest part.  Just run the hose in to the toliet and the water siphons down the drain.  Neat huh?