Birth Pool Upstairs??

Please help!

I'm planning a home birth and would like to have an inflatable pool for pain relief purposes, there are two options, they are both at the smaller end of the birth-pool spectrum.. here are the weights of the pools (filled):

'la bassine' 450kg / 1000 lbs 'birth-pool-in-a-box' 480kg / 1056 lbs

My weight would be additional, I'm small.. but heavily pregnant (still

5 weeks to go) so estimate max 70kg / 155 lbs. The midwife and my husband may obviously be attending to me close to the pool (but not in it!) at times so maybe their weights should be taken into account too?

Can anyone advise on whether it's ok to put this in our upstairs main bedroom? Our house is new (built 2006). There is a supporting (or is it load-bearing? wall downstairs that runs accross the bedroom (it's a very big room), would it be a good idea to place the pool over that? Or over a joist?

Reading around, it seems like the main risk is rotten joists / beans which is not a problem here due to newness of the house.

Obviously I don't want to be worrying about it on the day and definitely don't want to end up taking a shortcut down to the kitchen or dining room.

Should I get the advice of an architect / engineer, would that be pricey?

Thanks, jb.

Reply to
oblong
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Why don't you just go to hospital like normal people?

Reply to
The Medway Handyman

each to his/her own, with MRSA would you go in if you had a choice????

Reply to
Kevin

Maybe she doesn't want her new baby to be infected with MRSA, as has happened in one of our large local hospitals?

Reply to
Anne Welsh Jackson

And I thought hospitals were for ill people, or those with some form of defect that needed treatment. Giving birth doesn't fit either of those.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

not sure if the handyman wrote it in jest or hes just a typical man?

Reply to
Kevin

To restore balance to the world oblong wrote in snipped-for-privacy@l42g2000hsc.googlegroups.com

Around twice the weight of a old big bath - how many parties have you been to in first or second floor flats , add that weight up! I can not see a problem ,you could always fill it before the day and get hubby to jump up and down to test :) If you still have concerns for peace of mind just set it up downstairs.

All the best for your big day.

Chris

Reply to
Joker7

Leaving aside the issues of why the OP might choose to give birth in a relaxed intimate setting rather than in an NHS factory farm and whether she is therefore abnormal, and getting back to the poster's actual query: unless the house is practically on the point of collase anyway she has nothing to worry about.

10 stone = 140 pounds, so the larger pool is the weight of 7 and a half such people.

If your upstairs room could not comfortably support having 11 people standing in it then we'd routinely be hearing of floor collapses at parties where you may have 2 or 3 times that number crammed into a similar space.

Enjoy your birth. After giving birth most women say they never want to do it again: after my SO's homebirth she wanted to do it all again!

Reply to
John Stumbles

As those who have provided sensible answers have said, there shouldn't be a problem.

But, for added peace of mind, you could get advice from a Structural Engineer. It's likely to cost you about £100.

Reply to
Roger Mills

As most of the MRSA is bought into hospitals from home I would question that statement. At least they might test you for MRSA.

Reply to
dennis

If all they want is peace of mind its cheaper to hire an acro prop and a couple of 4x2 battens. Just as long as the batten goes across the joists and not along them or they will crack the plaster board.

Reply to
dennis

I would question yours at least at home you don't have wards full of sick people and their visitors

quote Who is most at risk of developing an MRSA infection?

The people who are most at risk of becoming either colonised or infected with

MRSA are those in close contact with people who may be carrying the bacteria,

for example in hospital wards that care for ill people.

Reply to
Kevin

If normal means like 90% of the rest of the world, squatting in a hut with a paraffin lamp is the 'natural' way to do it..;-)

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Oh I dunno. Babies are a chronic disease after all..

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

In article , dennis@home scribeth thus

LOL, course there us the start phase of this repro bizz, a mate of mine had to have the ceiling re plastered in the room under their bedroom apparently due to excessive stress loads;)....

Reply to
tony sayer

You don't usually get sick people in maternity wards/hospitals in the first place.

If you are ill a hospital is not necessarily the best place to be, hence the desire to close beds and treat people at home.

Reply to
dennis

Aye, and no paraffin either ...

Derek

Reply to
Derek

With a modern house the floor will be designed to meet current building regs or something close to them. These tend to assume a floor load of something like 100kg/m^2 of floor. So in a large room this is quite a substantial total load.

Note also that this load is not the point at which the floor will fail, but is spec that it must exceed or equal and not deflect by more than a small amount (14mm on long spans, or 0.003 times the length of the joist (in mm) on shorter ones). The failure point may well be significantly (probably more than double) the max load for building regs purposes.

So in summary, nothing to worry about unless you have huge amounts of heavy equipment in the room already. By all means set it up over the supporting wall - that should eliminate any remaining doubt.

Reply to
John Rumm

That's because he put the prop in the bedroom rather than downstairs?

Reply to
dennis

and no hut, they don't want to have to clean up the mess so they just do it outside.

Reply to
dennis

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