HWB - Hire or Buy a pool?

[RGPargy]

DP and I were going to hire a birthing pool, at the cost of nearly £300 for 5 weeks. My main reason for wanting to hire is because the pools come with a heater and thermostat.

But now i'm also tempted to buy a pool in a box, but i'm worried about how long it would take to heat the water with pans/kettle etc. Our hot water pressure is a complete joke and it takes forever for our kitchen sink to fill up with water to do the dishes, so i hate to think what it would be like trying to fill up a birthing pool!

So my question is how much of a hassle is it and how long does it take to warm the pool with pans and kettle fulls etc?

Is it really worth paying all that money to hire one with a heater or shall i just go for the pool in a box and use kettles and pans? We have 8 burners on our gas stove so we could get quite a few pans on the go at once!

Oh and i'm due at the end of November so it could be pretty chillllllly!! bbbrrr!!!

Just asked dh how long it took to fill our birth pool in a box and he reckoned about 45 minutes which included boiling a load of kettles. Once it's full of warm water it keeps the heat quite well because of the volume of water and also because you should keep the room itself quite warm. I think we took a bucket out every hour or so and topped it up with a couple of kettles of boiling water (get your dp to mind your legs, dh poured them a bit too close to my legs for comfort!) Don't foget that even if you've got a hired pool you've got to allow time to heat the water up or else keep it warm for days on end! I was very happy with my inflatable pool and if I ever had a fifth (unlikely) I would do the same. HTH.

Oh, and my baby was born in October and it was pretty cold!

Thanx Daisymoo. That's quite helpful.

Incidentally, you share your name with my cat, who is also called Daisy Moo!!!

Meow

Hi there

Check on ebay first. We bought a BPIABox, never used it as I transfered to hospital and then sold it half price on ebay. There were 3 or 4 on there in May.

Thanx Leo. Will do.

You could also try The Entertainer (yep, the toy shop) They used to do the deluxe version of the BPIAB as a paddling pool for about £35. If it's not on the website you could try phoning head office - they knew exactly what I was talking about as everybody was buying them for that reason!

Never heard of the entertainer! Might give them a look too. Cheers.

We used BPIAB for my homebirth, filled up with buckets and kettles - took probably an hour to do. Had to take a bucket of water out every hour and put in another bucket or two of hot water to keep it going.

I was in my pool from 5pm to 3am with an hours break and it never got cold

Sounds ideal really then doesn't it

I had a BPIAB. I filled it about 2/3 full with pure hot water (combi boiler) a few hours before I thought I@d need it, covered it with the heat retaining cover and then topped it up with mainly cold to the right temperature when I wanted it. When in it, I left the cover over half the pool, folded up and only took this off when I got to the pushing stage.

Loopy - just a hot tank i'm afraid!

Thanx for the tip Loopy! Will bear that in mind.

I used a bpiab and had no probs keeping the water hot with the cover + kettles. Both my sisters used a pool with a heater and said they don't really heat the water that well, they are more for maintaining the temp without adding kettles iyswim. Maybe not all are like that though.