filling up fishy pool

[littlemomma]

Hey mamas! For those of you using a kid pool for a homebirth, how are you filling it up with warm water? This morning I took a long 20 minute shower and when I got out, there was not enough warm water left for anything or anyone else. I realized that we probably won't have enough warm water to fill it up in one shot. Is the answer to this obvious? Do you just fill it up, when the water gets cold, stop and wait for it to warm up again? Or is there some secret I don't know about, like boil water? I can just imagine that it will be HARD to wait! Any thoughts?
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[candipooh]

You could turn the water on the water heater to a higher heat setting.

Or boil water. We did that for both of my fishy pool births. We have some huge pots that worked great.
It makes me laugh to think of the old "she's having ababy, boil the water" thing.

[camprunner]

We have a fairly decent sized water heater and it still wasn't enough. Dh did refuse to turn it up though. I think when he was racing against time to get it filled he regretted it. I agree turn it up and boil some water too.

[jraohc]

I agree on turning up the water heater, but why does that work? Why with a hotter water heater do you end up with more hot water?

[cheenya]

Originally Posted by jraohc

I agree on turning up the water heater, but why does that work? Why with a hotter water heater do you end up with more hot water?

I read this thread because I am currently debating kid pool vs. birth tub for our birth in February, so I have no experience, but I can answer this.
With the water heater turned higher you don't have a greater volume of hot water coming from the water heater, but you have hotter water. You need to add cold water to cool the super hot water off, which gives you a greater volume of water at the temperature you actually want.
I hope this makes sense.
-katrina

[beansavi]

Do you just fill up buckets and keep toting them? I always thought there was some magic hose from the washing machine to the pool or something, and then a hose to drain it out. Now that I want to do this, I don't have a clue...

[MidwifeErika]

We did it the old fashioned way, filled it bucket by bucket and emptied it the same way We got plenty of hot water as DH turned up the hotwater heater the day before my son was born and then he also kept all our soup pots on the stove with boiling water constantly. That way whenever the water started getting chilly, he would just pour a pot of water in and make it nice and toasty again. I now understand why when a woman goes into labor one should get some water boiling

[Peppamint]

We had our water heater turned a little higher because it's cranky and hard to adjust anway so we had plenty of hot water. Once it cooled a little, dh pulled out a couple of bucketfuls of water and we topped it off with hot water.

PS- we had a five foot hose that we hooked to the kitchen sink and draped right into the pool. The kitchen was the only place with enough room for setting up the pool without blocking doorways.

[teachinmaof3]

We didn't have to turn up our water heater either time. *shrug*

[Seie]

My best advice is that you do a trial run before going into labor. We did that with our fishy-pool and we timed it. We turned out water-heater up from 60 degrees celcius to 80 degrees (did this a few hours prior to the trial-run) and we had to fill it in two turns - it took us 15 minutes to fill it up half (enough to be useful for labor if you have a fast labor) and then we waited half an hour then spend another 15 minutes to fill it all up. So for us it took an hour roughly. We did not boil water on the store or anything and the pool kept the temperature much better than I had feared. Within that hour it only lost around 1-2 degrees celcius. That could be easily fixed had we boiled water to add..

We used a garden hose to connect to the tap.
And ofcourse when I finally went into labor I didn't have time to fill the tub - DP was off to drop our son off at his aunts and I had to get the pool ready myself between contractions. I managed to fill it up 1/4th before going in to push but even with so little water and even though I only used it during late transition and pushing it was a heavenly relief..

You can read my birthstory by following the link in my siggy if you are interested..