In water or on land? Evaluation of perinatal and neonatal outcomes of water births in low-risk women.

Objective: Evaluate perinatal and neonatal outcomes comparing a water birth to regular childbirth in low-risk women. File and methods: Retrospective analysis of a set of childbirths that took place over a given period of time in the hospital and health center of Havířov. We compared a set of low-risk women that had given a water birth to a selected control group of low-risk women that had given regular childbirth. We evaluated statistical comparability, as well as perinatal and neonatal outcomes in both sets.

Results: From 1. 1. 2020 to 28. 2. 2021, 1,083 women gave birth in the delivery department of Havířov hospital; from this set 122 were water births (11.3%). In our study, we only included 101 water deliveries (we designed our study to monitor low-risk births in order to be able to statistically correlate our findings; 21 water deliveries were excluded from our study due to perinatal risk factors - gestational diabetes and induced deliveries). We selected 60 low-risk women for our control group. Both sets of women were compared and we ruled out any statistically significant differences in age, education, body mass index, number of births given, gestation week at time of labor, number of smokers, premature rupture of membranes, women with previous history of one cesarean section, becoming pregnant by in vitro fertilization, presence of streptokoka skupiny B, and fetal weight. Water birth does not affect the Apgar score, neonatal adaptation to extra-uterine life, umbilical blood pH decrease, complications of infection, need of intensive care, and neonatal mortality. In the water birth set, we found increased occurrence of non-infectious conjunctivitis, treatable by regular eye drops without antibio-tics. We have not observed the effect of water birth on duration of the first and second stage of labor, total amount of uterotonics used, blood loss determined by the obstetrician, and uterine hypotonia. In the water birth group, we observed a prolonged third stage of delivery, lesser need for pharmacological stimulation (augmentation) of labor, notably lower use of analgesics, lower occurrence of birth injuries, shorter in-patient time, and more frequent bonding.

Conclusions: We discovered that water birth does not increase the risk for mother and neonate in low-risk women. Despite initial concerns, our outcomes and mother satisfaction have clearly shown that water births are not only a temporary whim, but probably a new integral part of our obstetric care.