It encourages your cervix to dilate and makes your perineum more elastic, which means that it is less likely to tear, and if it does tear, less likely that the tear will require a great number of stitches or an episiotomy . The humidity and moistness of the air coming off the water can ease your breathing. With your breathing eased, the pressures on your body lessened, your stress level lowered, and your pain decreased. You can expend all your energy laboring. Water births have been associated with faster delivery and less blood loss, though evidence supporting these claims, like most claims about water birth, is more anecdotal than scientific at this point.
Many people believe that water delivery is easier on babies as well.
Water equalizes the pressure on your baby, allowing optimal blood and oxygen flow during birth, and it has been credited with correcting minor malpresentations, like a misaligned head. Water is also said to be a gentle introduction, for your baby, to the world outside your womb. Most midwives and doulas can help you prepare for a water birth at home or at a birthing center, and most newer hospital units have birth tubs available that you can climb into at will. Waterproof fetal monitors are even available so that you can enjoy all the assets of both our technological age and this age-old method of pain relief. If progress slows, get out and move around to stimulate labor or try different positions like kneeling, squatting, sitting, and lying outstretched.