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Barbara Harper is the founder and director of Waterbirth International/GMCHA. She is a visionary who works everyday toward making waterbirth available in every hospital and birth center in the United States. Her book, Gentle Birth Choices, has been chosen by Lamaze International as one of the 10 best books on childbirth. The video, Gentle Birth Choices, as won awards and was named THE BEST video on childbirth by Midwifery Today Magazine.

Most people find great comfort and repose with water. Perhaps because we begin our lives surrounded in liquid in the womb, this basic familiarity stays with us throughout our lives. Human beings are comprised primarily of water, and many special characteristics we have link us to aquatic mammals, perhaps carrying the memory of a time when the human species had an "aquatic interlude." A three-day old fetus is 97 percent water, and at eight months the fetus is 81 percent water. By the time a human has grown to adulthood, the adult body is still 50 to 70 percent water, depending on the amount of fatty tissue.

Human beings' natural alliance with water is best witnessed in human babies who can swim naturally and easily long before they learn to sit up or crawl. During their first year of life, babies will calmly and happily paddle underwater, gazing around with eyes wide open. When they need to breathe, they naturally paddle toward the surface of the water before taking a breath. Babies instinctively know not to breathe while their heads are still submerged underwater. They wait until they reach the surface of the water before breathing. It seems to be only later that humans lose these instincts and become more prone to drowning.

Soaking in a tub of water to ease labor sounds inviting to most women. And for women who find water soothing and comfortable during labor, they usually want to give birth in water. However, laboring in water does more than merely relax and comfort the woman. Resting in a warm tub of water actually facilitates the progression of the latter stages of labor. Many women report a sensation like an "energy surge" that moves through them as soon as they step into the water. While a woman in labor relaxes in a warm pool, free from gravity's pull on her body, and with sensory stimulation reduced, her body is less likely to secrete stress-related hormones. This allows her body to produce the pain- inhibitors, endorphins, that compliment labor.

The hormones that are released during stress, noradreneline and catecholamines, actually raise the blood pressure and can inhibit or slow labor. Dr. Serge Weisel presented his findings from a study of women laboring in warm water in Belgium at the 1987 Pre & Perinatal Psychology Association of North America conference. Weisel stated that women with hypertension (high blood pressure) experienced a drop in blood pressure between 10 to 15 minutes after entering a warm bath.

Being more relaxed physically, a laboring woman is able to relax mentally. Many women, midwives and doctors acknowledge the analgesic effect of water. One obstetrical nurse who had a waterbirth, described sitting in a tub of warm water during labor as similar to "getting a shot of demerol, but without the side effects." Others have referred to the pool in labor as "a wet epidural." Women achieve a level of comfort in the water that in turn reduces their levels of fear and stress. Women's perception of pain is greatly influenced by their levels of anxiety. When labor becomes physically easier, a woman's ability to calmly concentrate is improved, and she is able to focus inward on the birth processes.

Water helps some women reach a state of consciousness in which their fear and resistance are diminished or removed completely; then their bodies relax, and their babies are born in the easiest way possible. Mothers feel not only relief, and although exhausted, they often feel exhilerated, estatic and delighted from having the full birth experience in such a wonderful way, and knowing the baby also has experienced little or no trauma! This is a positive result unknown in hospitals not equipped for water birthing.

Many women report being better able to concentrate once they get into the water. Doctors and midwives who attend waterbirths find that the mere sight and sound of water pouring into the tub helps some women release whatever inhibitions were slowing the birth, at times so quickly that the birth occurs even before the pool is filled. Often times women get in the pool to labor and the birth happens before they can get out of the pool.

Another benefit of waterbirth is the elasticity that water imparts to the tissues of the perineum, reducing the incidents and severity of tearing and the need for painful stitches or episiotomies. On the occasion of his 100th water delivery, Michel Odent reported that in the 100 waterbirths he had attended, there were no episiotomies performed and only 29 cases of tearing, all of which were minor surface tears. A 1989 nationwide survey published in The Journal of Nurse Midwifery on the use of water for labor and birth reported less incidents of perineal tearing with less severity.

The ease of the mother who labors and gives birth in water becomes the ease of the child who is born in the water, as well. Gentle alternatives that make birth easier for the mother most likely will make birth easier for the child. Their body responses are intricately linked. While the child is in the womb and when he is passing through the birth canal, the mother's experience influences the child's experience. The emotions the mother feels can also be felt by the child because the hormones her body secretes in response to her emotions are absorbed by the child.

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