With the a new Labor and Delivery unit at the Stony Brook University Medical Center in the stages of planning, we the undersigned would like to see birthing tubs included into the design of this new facility.

Since the beginning of modern water births in Moscow in the 1960's and in France with Dr. Michel Odent in the 1970's, water birth has become an increasingly accepted alternative to the medical model. In the UK today, this kind of birth option is becoming extremely popular with half of UK hospitals having installed birth pools for their local communities. Women who birth in water are often ecstatic about their births. And they tell others about their experiences. It is a ripple effect.

Many Long Island women want this option for their births and will seek out other places - namely their own homes or NUMC- if Stony Brook University Medical Center chooses not to offer this option to them.

Studies have shown water birth to be a valid, safe mode of birth. In 1995 research was complied and published into 'Water Birth Unplugged', which gathered information from 19,000 water births around the world via the leading international water birth practitioners. Dr. Paul Johnson, a neonatal physiologist at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, England offered his findings about the newborn's dive reflex. This research provides information, scientifically confirmed, that a newborn is protected against breathing while underwater in the moments after leaving the birth canal and emerging out of the water. This research supported the existing research of two German researchers, Gerd Eldering and Konrad Selke and helped to design the safety guidelines for water birthing.

Benefits of laboring or giving birth in water include:

• significant pain relief
• reduces the need for drugs and interventions
• facilitates mobility
• enables the woman to adopt optimal positions for birth
• speeds up the labor
• promotes relaxation
• conserves energy for the birthing woman
• helps to reduce tearing
• creates an easier birth for the mother and a gentler birth for the baby
• lowers blood pressure of laboring woman
• increases sense of empowerment in the new mother, increases the mother-child bonding process

These are only a few of the many benefits that local Long Island women can achieve if heard by Stony Brook University Medical Center. If SBUMC wants to be in the local forefront of this movement, if they remember that women in this community can choose to go elsewhere, birthing tubs will find their way back into the design plans for this new L&D unit.