Home birth - emptying Birth pool when bathroom is upstairs

[LuxuryTrifle]

Unfortunately our bathroom is upstairs - the birth pool would need to be on the ground floor (lots of reasons) and a major obstacle to going ahead with home birth is emptying the thing. I know kitchen sink can't handle the water and tends to flood in a birth pool draining scenario, even with a pump - needs a toilet or a drain really. It is a LONG way between where the birth pool Will be and the upstairs bathroom - easily 20 metres and upstairs. I can't see a pump really solving it?

Do you have a garden with a grid you could drain into?

Hosepipe out of the window. You should get good drainage as long as the "garden" end is lower than the pool end.

Yeah, we used a long hosepipe into the back garden. DH said he had to suck the far end to get it going because the hose had to go upwards for a stretch, BLEURGH!!

Clever MNers! Good ideas.

The pool would be by the big full-wall window facing the garden - we could run the hose into the garden where I think there is a little metal grid in the lawn - would that lead to the drain?

Argh - turns out we don't have a grating in the garden after all. I was sure we did. But no access to drain on ground floor at all except thru kitchen sink, which I have been advised can't handle birth pool drainage without flooding. So it's looking unlikely pool will work

Doesn't your kitchen sink waste pipe drain into a grating? I assume you've checked this, but just on the off-chance. How frustrating if it doesn't

A submersible pump attached to a hose and drain into various parts of the garden. If you're getting one of the inflatable pools, get your liner a size bigger as the supposed right size was too small for us

Where does your washing machine drain to? Sink?

My friend who was helping with birth pool emptied the pool with a bucket. Seemed to go down the kitchen sink as far as I could tell. Then I remembered I had spent £26 on an electric pump for emptying the pool and made her use that instead! (She was quite happy with buckets). That seemed to go down the sink too.
We don't have great drainage down our sink but the pool wasn't a problem.

You have to put the liner on the inflatable pool before you inflate the pool, otherwise it won't fit on.

I don't understand why not having a pool would impact having a home birth?

Anyway, you can just drain into the garden. The water will soak away through the grass, tiles, flowerbeds or whatever you have there. We often have a kiddie pool in ours in the summer and I always just turn it upside down and let the water 'flood' the garden. It disappears in no time at all.

It'd probably be good for the garden in fact!

TheCow, at least it won't do any harm. It is just water with maybe a tiny bit of blood and amniotic fluid in it. But mixed with all that water, it will be very diluted!

Def just out of door onto grass etc in no obvious drain. No prob at all. Or kitchen sink but outside easier due to gradient.