cleaning birth tub equipment

[natbabe]

Hello,

I'm not a MW, but a doula and looking to find a safe way to sanitize our birth tub equipment, or find out how professionals handle this.  :)  My doula partners and I have tubs that we rent to our clients.  We have been renting out our submersion pump as part of the tub rental.  We are trying to figure out if we can safely disinfect the pump to be used for the next mama and if we should do the same with the big hose that attaches to it, or if should get a new hose each time.  We already have our couples purchase a new fill hose, liner, thermometer, and scooper.  Any thoughts or ideas on this would be great.  TIA!

[phathui5]

You could run bleach water through it. Of course, it's being used to empty out the tub, which gets a new liner with each person, so I wouldn't stress out too much about using the same sump pump/emptying hose.

[womenswisdom]

If you run bleach water through it for 10 minutes you are good. I would definitely disinfect between clients because they may use the sump during labor to partially empty a tub if the water gets cold in order to run more hot water in and you'd want that to be clean. I would also wipe down the interior and exterior of the tub with bleach water as well to get rid of any fluids that may have dripped while entering or exiting the tub.

[natbabe]

Thank you.  Yes- we just rented our tub for the second time and had to empty some and refill during a long labor.  that is why this question came up.  :)  I was thinking about bleach water to clean, but wasn't sure how appropriate that is.  thanks again!

[conniebonnie]

We always bale of we need to empty the tub a bit because I just don't feel certainthat the pump is sterile. It doesn't even come in the house until its time to clean up. And we use the hose they filled with to pump out.

[CortLong]

A bucket of bleach water will do the trick.

[MidwifeErika]

I run bleach water through mine when the pool is empty, but I still will only use it when we are DONE using the birth pool with the liner. Even though it has been cleaned with bleach water, I just prefer to not put something into someone's birth water that has been in someone else's birth water. I have families buy new hoses for this reason and I don't bring those ducky thermometers or anything. If we need to pull water out of the pool then we can pull out some buckets or we can use the hose and syphon it out that way.