Like an empowering micro-home: A qualitative study of women's experience of giving birth in water

To describe women´s experiences and perceptions of giving birth in water. A qualitative study with in-depth interviews three to five months after the birth. A content analysis of the interviews was made. One city-located hospital in Stockholm, offering waterbirth to low risk women. 20 women, 12 primiparas and 8 multiparas, aged 27–39. The overall theme emerging from the analysis was, “Like an empowering micro-home”, which describes the effect of being strengthened, enabled and authorized in the birth process. Three categories were found: “Synergy between body and mind”, “Privacy and discretion”, and “Natural and pleasant”. The immersion in warm water provided the women with conditions that helped them to cope and feel confident during labour and birth. The homelike and limited space of a bathtub helped give a relaxed feeling of privacy, safety, control and focus for the women. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of what waterbirth offers to women. For some women, waterbirth may be a way to accomplish an empowering and positive birth experience, and could work as a tool that preserves the normality of, and increases self-efficacy in, childbirth.