Child Birth Options

In-Room Water Tubs

Santiam Hospital & Clinics offer in patients’ room water tubs for labor. The benefits of laboring in water are numerous for both you and baby. The act of immersing yourself in a spacious tub of warm water will immediately soothe the body, allowing buoyancy and a loss of gravity to assist with labor. Position changes are easier, there is a sense of privacy in the water, and your partner can even support you in our labor tubs.

Laboring in water encourages widening of the pelvis, and helps with the baby’s descent through the birth canal. A potential benefit of laboring in water is decreased pain during labor; with relaxation, less adrenalin is produced, while beta-endorphin and oxytocin, the body’s natural pain-relievers, are increased.

Benefits for Mother

• Warm water is soothing, comforting and relaxing
• In the later stages of labor, water has been shown to help relax a woman’s body and to increase her energy level
• The effect of buoyancy lessens a mother’s body weight, allowing free movement and new positioning
• Immersion in water often helps lower high blood pressure caused by anxiety
• The water seems to reduce stress-related hormones, allowing the mother’s body to produce endorphins which serve as pain-inhibitors
• Since the water provides a greater sense of privacy, it can reduce inhibitions, anxiety and help ease pain
• As the leading laboring woman relaxes physically, she is able to relax mentally with greater ability to focus on the birth process
• Water causes the perineum to become more elastic and relaxed, reducing the incidence and severity of tearing or need for an episiotomy leading to stitches
• Tubs are large enough for spouse/partner to join for support of laboring woman

Benefits for Baby

• Provides an environment similar to the amniotic sac
• Eases the stress of the birth thus increasing reassurance and sense of security

Cesarean Section Operating Room

About C-Section OR

• A C-Section can be scheduled or emergent
• Your spouse/partner can be at your bedside during the C-section
• The C-Section OR is a fully equipped, sterile environment
• Baby will stay with mom in the C-section OR until both can be safely transferred to their private patient room

Santiam Hospital & Clinics Offers “Gentle C-Sections”

• Our Gentle C-Sections procedure allows Mom & birth partner to see baby during delivery
• Mom and baby experience skin-to-skin contact and may begin breast feeding immediately upon delivery
• Baby, Mom & birth partner may stay together in the same private room
• Mom is walking soon after delivery, and is able to eat the same day