Just Say No to Abuse Declaring War on Terrorism. Many women in labor find that being in water helps them relax and helps relieve pain.
Some women prefer to stay in water at the time of birth and deliver their baby in the tub or pool.
Others stay in water only part of the time during the labor and choose to birth their babies in a bed. The first recorded water birth was in 1803 in France. According to the story, a woman who had been in labor for 48 hours climbed into a tub of hot water to relax and her baby was born shortly afterward. Not much is mentioned again about the technique until the 1960's when a Russian scientist, Igor Charcovsky, began experimenting with the use of warm water immersion for women in labor to see how it affected their labor, the birth, and newborn behavior. Then in the late 1970's through the 1980's various obstetric practitioners began using warm water baths for laboring and birthing women.