The effect of water birth on the duration of labor and pain level in comparision with land birth

Due to the objectives of the World Health Organization and ministry of health concerning decreasing the rate of cesarean section, elective cesarean substitutes have to be investigated. Consequently, this study tried to evaluate the effect of water birth as a vaginal delivery method without the physician intervention on decreasing the pain level and the labor duration. This clinical trial study was carried out on 100 G1 and G2 pregnant women of 38 to 42-week pregnancy referring to Assalian Clinic. The samples were divided into two 50-member groups undergoing either water birth or land birth. The labor duration, as well as the pain level were evaluated and analyzed statistically using Chi-Square, Kruskal-Wallis test, and Mann-Whitney test, and the p<0.05 criterion was considered to be significant. We found that the average duration of the active phase of pregnancy for water birth was 3.1±0.8 hours compared to the same duration in the opposite group which was 4.7±0.8 hours showing a statistically significant decrease (p<0.05). Moreover, the duration of the second stage of water birth group was 0.53±0.22 hours in comparison with 0.88 ± 0.43 hours for the second group. Based on the p<0.05 criterion, the duration of the second stage of labor significantly decreased for water birth. The pain levels were determined in both groups using Visual Analog Score, which are: 3.53 ± 0.79 and 6.96 ± 1.7 for water birth and land birth respectively based on the criterion, and the decrease in the pain level was considered to be significant for water birth. Results of the study suggested that the water birth may have been a non-pharmaceutical and non-invasive substitute for the selected cesarean cases due to the shorter labor, the lower pain level, and the lowered physician intervention.