Taking birth pool to the hospital?? Anyone done this??

[lulumama]

Client due in October, wants a water birth....but is adamant that homebirth is not for her....this is baby number 3...and has had two fairly horrendous labours & deliveries..

wants a water birth, and to manage without other pain relief..hospital only has one birth pool, and is available first come first served

So, has anyone taken their own birth pool to the hospital?

can anyone recommend a good, portable pool?

TIA

Sounds like a sound plan to me - as long as the hospital are ok with filling it and there is time to pump it etc.

I would check with the hospital first. There are probably issues with the weight and insurance, etc.

The CMU here had to have the floor reinforced for its pool to be installed.

will check with head of midwifery when i go to the next MSLC meeting...has been agreed , sort of , but a very brief convo between client and head of midwifery

i am also worried about the time element in filling the pool...how long does it take?

Forever for me... but that was with me carrying washing up bowls of water back n forth mid contractions

I have a birth pool in a box, regular size, and I managed to pump it up a few weeks ago with the hand pump supplied in about 15 mins. Bearing in mind I am quite heavily pg I thought this was quite good! It says on the packaging that it holds 3.5 baths full of water, so I suppose it would take about 20 mins or so to fill.

HTH

thanks all!

flame...did you have to do it yourself !!

I was bored and p*ssed off by that time that I was still having contractions every 5-10 mins but nothing much was happening... DH was planning to fill it, but I thought it would keep me occupied and possibly shift things along... it didn't

And after all that waddling with the water, I still didn't get to use the f*ckin thing because at 6.45am I wasn't "far enough along" - and yet by 7.45am I was sat on my sofa feeding my baby.

Not that I'm bitter or anything....

Hi Lulumama. The pool I have is the La Bassine, have at look at the Made in Water website, as I am sure they have filling times listed. I can highly recommend it, it was big enough but intimate at the same time. It also comes in its own bag which makes it easy to carry around.

My local hospital wouldn't agree to bringing your own because the floors would have to be reinforced (maternity wing is on the 1st floor).

thank you all!

much appreciated

poor you flame.. i thought i was badly done to when DH was still sorting out the nursery whilst i was having contractions every 5 minutes!!

will bring it up again at the MSLC and take it from there

such a shame there is only one birth pool on site

re weight of it...delivery suite on the 4th floor !! eeek !

thanks LM, i did say this to client, but she is not comfortable with home birth, so we have to adapt !

BPIAB were selling inflatable pools to hospitals and working on getting hospitals to agree to allow women to take in their own pools - they were advertising in midwifery journals. It would be worth giving them a call and asking if they have any knowledge about the hospital concerned or have supplied pools that have been used there.

WRT the weight issue: If the England rugby (15 larger-than-average blokes) team came in and posed in the corner of a room for a team photo, would the hospital be quaking in their boots and wondering if the floor was going to collapse? Would they be concerned about the floor collapsing if they had to ask these men to squish together into a space less than 2x2m? If the answer is no, then you should ask them why they are worried about a birth pool, which will weigh considerably less.

thank you sue and loopy...will contact them, good idea !!

Another problem with hospitals is that the water pressure to fill the pool is not always good enough and the drainage facilities not always adequate.

would be worth checking with the hospital how many water births they have a year. I know at my local one when I had DD they had only had 7 in the previous year! So you'd have to be bloomin unlucky to find it in use already....

...but that's because they have a long list of "not allowed water birth because...." and then complain it's hardly ever used.....

thakn you all !! erm , not actually done anything about this yet, as client not due for a while....my current lady wants a water birth..so we will see what happens...

thanks for the info , will definitely keep you posted xxxx

discussed today with head of midwifery, and they are fine with it, as long as she is not high risk, and the pool has disposable liner, apparently has been done before ! so that is good..have checked out BPIB and La Bassine....thanks very much..x