Making the water clean for a waterbirth

I just wanted to share some things I have learned about home water safety that I wish I had known before I had my son in a birth pool at home. If any one has more to add- please share!

Garden hoses generally contain a lot of toxins, particularly phthalates and high levels of lead! So it's best not to fill your birth pool using a regular garden hose (nor your garden if you grow food- but that's another topic). Garden hoses are not made to carry drinking water. Apparently the best hose to use for your edible garden, and therefore filling the birth pool, is a swimming pool hose. Any pool store should sell them.

Tap water in most houses contains chlorine, fluoride and a host of other chemicals you don't want to expose your freshly born baby to. You can avoid this if you use a whole house filter or a filter at the tap you use to fill up the birth pool from. If either of these options wont work for you, then there are garden hose filters available that you can attach to the hose you use. Makes things simple and they are pretty cheap.

...got food grade hose...dont have a filter!! must get one!

Where did you get a food grade hose?

This is very timely as we're in the process of thinking about/buying hoses etc. Thanks heaps for this post. We were looking at food grade hoses but yeah chlorine etc is a problem. Its pretty bad here so we have filters, need to look into one for bubs.

Thanks meow, I never thought of this with ds2. We got a pool hose anyway but I didn't use a filter. I know for next time now ;)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk so forgive spelling mistakes :)

meow - food grade hoses you can get at Bunnings type of places.

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meow - food grade hoses you can get at Bunnings type of places.

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Oh good! I had a feeling Bunnings would be on to it.

Sort of at the other end of the waterbirth - the bigger diameter grey water hoses are way quicker at siphoning out the birthpool water.

We only have rain water but the hose toxins are a good point :)

Thanks for sharing!
xx

Thanks for sharing. I really want a home water birth next time and never even thought about this. Thanks x

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We only have rain water but the hose toxins are a good point :)

Thanks for sharing!
xx

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Rain water from where? Do you filter it?

Rainwater tanks.

Nope we don't filter.

The bore water here is spring water too.

I would filter it for the birth pool.

ETA: hope I am not sounding bossy :redface: because it is none of my business.

Huh, good point about the hoses! We're not ttc #2 yet, but we've talked about a home waterbirth when the time comes. I guess there's a lot I haven't considered!

I'd also filter the rainwater, lots of yuckies like to live in rainwater tanks.

We drink/bath/shower in the water unfiltered and we're all good :)

Does anyone think that this is a little silly? Are you going to filter the bath water you bathe your newborn baby in? The issues with the hose is a valid point, as is the filtering of tap water, but rainwater would be absolutely safe to give birth in. Kaytee, there is only an issue with tank water if it has been tainted and you would know that because it would smell and taste bad. The muck in the bottom of the tanks is only an issue if the water is disturbed. We have been using the tanks on our place for over 11 years now and not once have we cleaned them out. Not once have any of my newborns had any problems from being exposed to this water.

and not only that, as soon as you get in the water yourself the water is immediately unclean. Then you might poo or wee in it during labour, so it all sounds a little bit silly really.

Yeah very good points Trillian. I guess my only experience with rainwater so far is gross, we once lived in a place with a really old tank and the water was in no way better than the tap water.

Wee and poo are a LOT different to lead, chlorine and fluoride! If I had my time over I would absolutely filter the bath water for my newborn baby too. Chlorine ruins your body's flora. A newborn baby is trying to establish gut flora. The two are not compatible. Mum's poo and wee are naturally occurring and assist in creating that gut flora.

Can you birth in your bore water Sara? The idea of birthing in mineral rich spring water sounds like perfection to me. Water as nature made it, not how humans ruined it!

Tap water, absolutely yes it should be filtered - I said as much in my previous post. But the fact still remains that you would have to continue to filter the water even once the baby is born. That's what I was pointing out.

Yeh I could :)

It all really depends on how much rain we get.

If we dont get much rain we pump bore water into the rain water tanks when we need too. But if we get plenty of rain the tanks are usually full of rain water.

But if I did want to, we could use the bore water tap to fill the pool. :)

You said a couple of times that whole thing was silly, which I took to mean you find it pointless.

Well probably not totally pointless and if it makes anyone feel more comfortable knowing they have filtered the water then it's not a big deal and it certainly wont do any harm, but yeah, I do find it silly.

I was thinking of bird poo from run off from roofs into the rainwater tank. Might be ok for big people but not too sure about newborns if they get it in their mouths *shrugs*

I wasn't going to filter my town water to fill the pool. After all I will be bathing the baby in it and it should be free from micro organisms that will make baby sick... That was my concern with the rainwater.

ETA: not that it is any of my business if anyone filters their water or not, it just seemed on topic to mention it. :)

I get the idea of the hoses for sure. I wouldn't think its odd that someone else did filter the water. I don't think I'd filter the water as someone else said as soon as I or DH got in the water it wouldn't be 'clean' anymore... Interesting topic.

I find it interesting that chemicals and body fluids are considered the same so there is no point filtering the water for chemicals. It's also interesting the level of faith we have that there is nothing wrong with our water supply.

Did you know that one drinking glass of water contains as much fluoride as a pea sized piece of toothpaste? And yet we are warned to spit out the toothpaste and certainly you shouldn't be feeding it to a newborn.

Certainly it's no concern of mine if someone else chooses not to take these measures to prevent chemical exposure for their newborn baby, but I wish I had known and understood the significance when I birthed my babies so I wanted to share the knowledge. You can call me silly all you want :)

I think you have raised some really good points meow.
Find grade hoses everybody agrees on.
I know alot of people who purify all their drinking water- from city tap. And couple who went to great lengths to purify birthing water for similar reasons to what you talk about.
Everybody has different experiences with health and for some of us everything we can do helps.
And some people still use j&j products.
Its all silly and all totally resonable, depending where you sit in the spectrum

Sent from my Galaxy with the barefoot princess covering me in kisses, so please forgive the mistakes

Meow. Always so clever. No now you mention it, there is no way I feel that my 'germs' are the same as chemicals. Also 'funny' to think of the money I spend to not wash my kids with chemicals and just I never think of the water....

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Meow. Always so clever.

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:lol: Not always! And I didn't do any of this myself ;)

I really don't mind if anyone doesn't want to take the info on board- no skin off my nose. I'm not sure if I was in a place to be totally receptive to this info when birthing my children. I probably would have said "Oh, they'll be fine." But I'm glad the discussion is here now for anyone who wants the info.