Birth tub question

[RachelGS]

I had a birth center birth with my first baby, and I'm thinking about homebirth the next time around. The jacuzzi at the birth center was absolutely essential, though. I was in it for about 15 hours, all told. At home, we'd need to rent a birth tub, but our water heater barely fills our bathtub. There's no way we'd have enough hot water to fill a birth tub. Are there heater options that actually work? Ideas?

[oceanbaby]

Many of them have built in heating elements - aquadoula and spa in the box are two that I know of. I haven't actually used either one though, but have heard the spa in the box highly recommended.

[TurboClaudia]

Or you could look into installing an instant hot water heater. They cost a few hundred dollars and you would have instant hot water every time you turned on a faucet. Check out a plumbing store or your local Home Depot/ Lowe's for more info.

warmly,
claudia

[2+twins]

We ran out of hot water with our 2nd birth (new home - only a 40 gallon water heater). We anticipated this though, so we started boiling as many pots of water as possible once we began filling the tub. This did the trick. Since we added boiling hot water, we were able to use more cold water to get enough in there. I've used both the Spa-In-a-Box & the Aquadoula. Both have heating elements to keep the water warm once it's in there (or to warm cold water but it would take a couple of days to warm a tub full of cold water). I greatly preferred the spa-in-a-box.

[Mummoth]

Most electric hot water heaters have a heat control on them. Yours may be set at a lower heat (ours is, because it's safer when you have toddlers for the hotwater out of the tap to not be scalding) Check what yours is set at... if you put it on the highest it will go, the water you get out of the tank will go further... (just remeber to turn it back down after the birth!)

[cottonwood]

We're looking at installing one of those instant hot water heaters too.

What we did before was keeping boiling pots of hot water on the stove -- not only does the boiling water quickly raise the temperature in the tub, but the boiling humidifies the air! (which is especially nice in the winter, if you have forced-air heating)