Why have a water birth?
Water provides a natural aid to the body's pain relieving systems and many women have enjoyed natural and drug free births in our pools. An Aquabirths pool is large and deep, insulated and padded, offering women and their partner maximum space to move around, and comfort for resting during labour and birth. The pool provides a calm and safe environment where a mother can have privacy and control over her labour and birth. As parents of four waterbabies out of five children, we would recommend an Aquabirths pool. It is simply a beautiful place to give birth!

Do we hire inflatable pools? No. Over the last 15 years we've thought about using them for the sake of ease of posting and cost to customer. To get a pool of a quality that we were happy to hire or sell would cost the same as a rigid pool. The cut-price inflatables in vogue are children's pools and are not intended for use indoors. We can fully understand why people would want to use a less expensive option: water births should be available on the NHS and we deplore the gross variation in provision. Aquabirths is partly a social enterprise - if cost is an obstruction, please do contact us!! We will leave the last words to a woman who was, until recently, an agent for a birth pool company selling inflatable (paddling) pools -

the inflatable was good but I want a proper pool for my second birth. Whenever I leant on the sides I was never sure.

With an Aquabirths pool you get safety and assurance, and you also get a service that looks after you.

How big is the pool?
How big is the pool? The pool is circular, 1.5m (5 feet) in diameter and 0.73 m (2' 6") high. It comes in four sturdy, insulated fibreglass arcs which can be quickly and easily bolted together. Two liners (a thick one and a sanitised one) are stretched over this frame to hold the water. The size of the pool gives plenty of space for a large pregnant body to move about in or for a partner or midwife to get in. Everything you need comes with it.

Is it easy to assemble?
The assembly of the pool is simple, taking about 10 minutes if you know what you're doing, and 20 minutes if you don't. For practical reasons it is easier if there are two people stretching the liners over the frame.