Home Water Birth - which pool? Hire or buy second hand?

[wineymummy]

As the title says really. Hoping for a home water birth for my second. Cheapest hire I have found is £95 for La Bassine/£105 for Birth Pool in a Box. Buying, the La Bassine isn't much more (and I have a midwife friend who could hopefully get me the 20% discount.) But the liners are £30+ so it all adds up. Second hand pools seem to be about £65-70 in my local area, so with a new liner it's pretty much the same to hire...though I could re-sell afterwards. But is that too much faff? And if I buy a new La Bassine and don't use it (and don't open the box) I can get a refund. Ahhh. Any advice anyone? And is Birth Pool in a Box worth the extra money or will La Bassine do? There's no way my DH will be getting in the pool with me, he's far too squeamish, so I don't need a big one.

Do you know if your hospital/MLU hire them out? My local hospital hire them out for £5, so maybe worth checking.

I hired a birthpoolinthebox from barefoot birth pools and was very pleased with their service and the pool. For my first birth I had the big one and for my second the smaller one. I did prefer the extra depth of the bigger one which made it more comfortable to kneel however my second birth was so quick it didn't really matter in the end.

Thanks - I am going on a home birth ante-natal course run by the hospital next week so I will ask them about direct hire - but not as far as I know. £5 is a bargain! My area really push home births so it would be great if they did this.
Thanks for the experience on the deeper pool. I am expecting second labour to be pretty quick as my first was 10 hours first contraction to birth. Will give this some thought.

I bought one from la bassine. Worked out much better for us as I had an induction so it didn't get used. Returned it and got the money back whereas if we hired it we wouldn't have gotten anything back.