Birth Stool

[TmnJack]

Has anyone made a birth stool and have any ideas that would make a successful birth possible.

[Joe Barta]

Boiling water, clean towels and some gear lube.

Birth stool? That's quite a visual. Never heard of such a thing, but good luck in your search.

[Lobby Dosser]

Being sorta curious and having assisted at something more than 100 births - where I cleaned up a lot of stool - I DAGS and found this:

along with 644 other hits.

[Lee Michaels]

Birth stool??

You might try a local hospital.

And they provide birthing services as well.

[George]

There's a longer-legged version for politicians' mothers....

[Alan Holmes]

Have the lady stand up whilst giving birth, the present habit of lying down is the result of fashion, started by a king about 150 years ago, who wanted so see his mistress giving birth, so all the other idiots followed his example.

Women have been giving birth standing up, sucesfully, for hundreds of thousands of years.

Alan

[mac davis]

Well, I've made a few births possible... what's the prospective mom look like?

mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

[Lobby Dosser]

To ensure they get dropped on their heads?

[nlbauers]

For those that may not know- the idea behind a birthing stool is to ease the tired muscles from giving birth in the squatting position. And just to be perfectly clear, it's the woman who sits on the stool when she gets tired, not dad. ;-)

Those that I have seen (and believe me, I saw one in particular up close and personal, and with a whole lot of never-look-at-a-woman-the-same-way-again details) were like a toilet seat on legs. About the same height, and with plenty of room for an adult to get their arms positioned underneath.

A midwife might be a good resource for the good and the bad of how such a stool ought to be designed, since I believe the stools tend to be used more often in natural child birth.

HTH, Neil

[Andy Dingley]

Not personally, but it's a common project at some of the green woodworking workshops hereabouts (I suspect there are more stools than resultant children).

There are two designs - a vaguely kidney-shaped stool and the "toilet seat" / horseshoe shaped sort. The rest of it is your basic green wood / Windsor stool. Obviously the horseshoe design gives more support under the thighs - AIUI the kidney sort is OK for use with an assistant (supporting the mother from behind) but if they're sitting on it alone and they try to push, they fall straight over backwards!

Compared to a typical stool, the legs are very short and more splayed than usual. You should use green techniques for attaching the legs (round tenons wedged into through holes in the seat) - these legs are more likely to work loose if over-stressed sideways, rather than breaking off. The horseshoe design is very short grained. I'd use elm for a seat - maybe you could use maple on your side of the Pond. As with all these stools, an Arbortech cutter is an easier way to shape seats than a drawknife or adze (but make card templates to check profile).

Grow 'em in jars. I'm with Huxley on this one.

[George]

Not just the stool that makes a mess. Wonder what kind of finish they have on one of these.

Sometimes I think handles would work well in the smallest room in the house.

[Ba r r y]

Maybe they have wooden boat builders apply a finish.