Gisele Bundchen Had A Water Birth
Posted on January 28, 2010 at 1:58 PM
Although Gisele Bundchen only gave birth to her first child, Benjamin, less than two months ago, she’s already back to doing photoshoots! A reporter from Brazilian magazine Fantastico had an interview with Gisele and described the model this way:
[T]he new mom looked radiant, beautiful and as “in shape as always, six weeks after the birth of her baby.”
Goodness! Gisele reportedly wasn’t shy about discussing the details of Benjamin’s birth. She opted against giving birth in a hospital.
“I gave birth in the bathtub,” at the couple’s Beacon Hill penthouse.
Well, that’s one way to keep things private- lol. (Although, as I think about it, do you recall seeing any pictures of celebrities entering/leaving the hospital right before/after giving birth?)
It sounds like everything is working out well for Gisele and dad Tom Brady. Did you opt to give birth at home or do you know anyone who did? How did it go?
Photos by INF
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33 thoughts on “Gisele Bundchen Had A Water Birth”:
I can totally understand opting for a home birth. Studies show it as just as safe, possibly safer than a hospital birth for women identified by their midwives as low-risk. Good for her for getting the birth she wanted (I am assuming, most women who birth in a tub do so intentionally).
I love the approach to birth in the UK where most births are attended by midwives. If they are properly trained and know what they are doing, they know when and if transfer to a hospital is appropriate in case of emergencies.
Having said that, all of my children in the future will need to be born in a hospital. I am okay with it. With my history, no midwife worth her salt would say a homebirth is appropriate for me.
It’ also a magazine. It’s from Globo magazines/newspapers.
HOOOOOOORAY for home waterbirth!!!!!!!
I have 2 kids- first was epidural in the hospital. Had nothing but health problems after.
Second, was home waterbirth. the most amazing thing I’ve EVER done.
(Hospital was nearby and we did go to the pediatrician hrs after his birth b/c he wasn’t feeding. Regardless- it was wonderful.)
How long were you in labor?
“Fantástico” is a popular TV show, not a magazine.
I’d be open to any form of childbirth, but I’m not sure if my body could do them. I have scoliosis (curved spine) and I’m not sure how well I’d do without any pain meds!
I had my daughter in the hospital, they do tell you that first time mom could birth for a long time, but god that was toooo long. I’m glad i opted for hospital, no drugs though and a lot of walking. They told me i was too fit, my muscles wouldn’t let go.
I might consider homebirth for my second one. We’ll see.
I’ve just given birth in my bath tub at home, not too long ago. The risks of delivering in a hospital are were more than enough motivation to choose to deliver at home. Everything went spectacularly well, although it was a long labor. But had I been at a hospital, I would have been sectioned after hour 16. Congrats to the new family on their new son, and their decision to birth at home!
Hey there Nicole because my scoliosis was in my lower in my lower lumbar spine I was particularly afraid of an epidural. No matter who spoke to me they couldn’t convince me they would get it right the first try. Although I did not has a water birth, I did have a drug free birth. I was about 5 wks early but all went well. My daughter and I were home from the hospital with 48 hrs. That was 10 years ago.
Collect all info, be committed to your choice , but know tha ultimately the goal is a health mom and baby.
Are you kidding? The bathtub is one of the best places to give birth. The warm water helps to ease labor pains. Women give birth like this everywhere these days especially in CA.
Do some research before you judge.
Are you kidding? The bathtub is one of the best places to give birth. The warm water helps to ease labor pains. Women give birth like this everywhere these days especially in CA. Do some research before you judge.
Babies are born everyday in many ways. What matters is that they’re healthy and that the mom recovers so that she can be a great mom. I met a homebirther who raved about her homebirths even over a decade after her kids were born, but sucked as a mom and abused her kids. See how this adds up.
Congrats to her! My second was born at home b/c of the first’s terrible(but normal as hospital births go) hospital birth. She was born in a tub, and it was phenomonal!!
Are you kidding? The bathtub is one of the best places to give birth. The warm water helps to ease labor pains. Women give birth like this everywhere these days especially in CA.
Do some research before you judge.
I just saw this story online and am ecstatic! It’s so wonderful when celebrities choose natural and homebirths, giving this choice more publicity for modern women.
My first child, a daughter, was born a year ago at home in a birthing tub. I am now pregnant with our second child, and am planning for another waterbirth at home. I would never change my experience and am so glad I was informed enough before my birth to choose to have her at home.
I am currently in the process of pursing becoming a midwife, and am so passionate about pregnancy, birthing, and postpartum care for mothers and their babies. The American woman has been convinced that birthing is a painful and traumatic experience. For most women, this may actually be true, but I would venture to say that in over 90% of those birthing situations, it didn’t need to be true.
A lot of times women enter birth wanting to try to have a natural birth, only thinking they’ll “succumb” to pain medication after they’ve given natural a try. What they don’t think about when trying natural is there are other things that are policy to administer in hospitals other than just pain medications, that can intensify contractions and cause more pain than if the labor had truly progressed naturally. Pitocin, Cytotec and other drugs used for elective induction and labor augmentation are all given to 90% of women in hospitals as procedure. These drugs are similar to naturally occurring hormones in a birthing woman’s body, but they don’t react in the body the same way a woman’s natural hormones do. Even for women who request a natural birth but aren’t progressing as fast as the doctor may desire, are told that they are being given something via IV that will just help the baby along.
Besides the contractions being more intense for the woman, the contractions are very intense for the baby. When the uterus contracts, blood flow is restricted to the baby. With synthetically induced contractions, the time the uterus is contracted is a lot longer and more intense than with natural contractions. If a woman receives an epidural, the synthetic hormone must be raised and so the baby can be receiving very little oxygen through the blood while the mother is feeling no pain as a result of the epidural. This causes the baby to go into distress from lack of oxygen, often leading to emergency c-section.
Even for women who do not receive any synthetic hormones, the restriction of movement in the hospital setting, as well as the unrealized stress of being under a “time table” and having so many people who you have never met checking you, all leads to longer and more painful labors.
My labor was a perfect example of how an experience can be different in a hospital setting vs. a home setting. If I had birthed in a hospital, I would have been a perfect case for intervention. My water broke at 10am on a Saturday, but I did not even begin contractions until 1pm the next day, and delivered my daughter at 7pm that evening. If I had been in a hospital, I would have been on a “24 hour” time table from the moment my water broke, because of the “risk of infection”. If I hadn’t started contractions by the end of the afternoon the first day, I would have been pressured to begin Pitocin or something else to jumpstart my contractions. The error in this thought process is that there is a risk for infection only when lots of different people are doing checks on a woman, and in a hospital where there is more chance for infection based on the number of sick people in the surrounding areas. My body took a different time table, and still birthed a beautiful baby girl.
When women choose to have a homebirth, the possibility of receiving any pain medication is completely removed. When you don’t have that option available, you focus on what your body is capable of and the process it was designed to do. Your mind gears up for the birth extremely differently than when you go to a hospital thinking “I’ll try natural and get pain meds only if”. That is what Gisele is talking about.
I would not describe my birthing at painful. Intense, oh definitely! It was the most intense, difficult thing I have ever done in my life. But at no point did I think I wanted to go to a hospital and receive medication. I was in the moment, bringing my baby into the world.
In the end, yes the result that everyone wants is a healthy baby and happy mama. That is the line that is used by many people who are defending hospital birthing, or who have had an intense, intervention-filled birth. The flaw in this logic is that homebirths are statistically safer than hospitals births, especially in the United States. The United States has the second highest infant mortality rate in developed countries. We are also very highly ranked in mother mortality in developed countries. These are both in spite of the fact that Americans pay more for birthing than any other country even comes close to. We are the only first world country that delivers a majority of its babies in hospitals. All other first world countries deliver less than 30% of their babies in hospitals, and yet their mortality rates are far lower than ours.
I am not against hospitals or OBs. Not in the least. We need both! Hospitals are amazing centers of healing for sickness, full of highly skilled professionals who help our society immensely. But I do not believe that pregnancy or birth is a sickness that needs to be healed. OBs are trained to be surgeons, and they are very well trained! We do have births that require true emergency c-section (probably only 1% of those labeled emergency c-section were a truly unavoidable emergency), and I’m SO glad the OBs are there for those situations. But I don’t believe we need surgeons delivering our children a majority of the time.
All that to say I am so happy to hear that Gisele had a waterbirth at home and is going public with her experience. I hope this helps the American women become more informed about birthing and their options.
I just saw this story online and am ecstatic! It’s so wonderful when celebrities choose natural and homebirths, giving this choice more publicity for modern women.
My first child, a daughter, was born a year ago at home in a birthing tub. I am now pregnant with our second child, and am planning for another waterbirth at home. I would never change my experience and am so glad I was informed enough before my birth to choose to have her at home.
I am currently in the process of pursing becoming a midwife, and am so passionate about pregnancy, birthing, and postpartum care for mothers and their babies. The American woman has been convinced that birthing is a painful and traumatic experience. For most women, this may actually be true, but I would venture to say that in over 90% of those birthing situations, it didn’t need to be true.
A lot of times women enter birth wanting to try to have a natural birth, only thinking they’ll “succumb” to pain medication after they’ve given natural a try. What they don’t think about when trying natural is there are other things that are policy to administer in hospitals other than just pain medications, that can intensify contractions and cause more pain than if the labor had truly progressed naturally. Pitocin, Cytotec and other drugs used for elective induction and labor augmentation are all given to 90% of women in hospitals as procedure. These drugs are similar to naturally occurring hormones in a birthing woman’s body, but they don’t react in the body the same way a woman’s natural hormones do. Even for women who request a natural birth but aren’t progressing as fast as the doctor may desire, are told that they are being given something via IV that will just help the baby along.
Besides the contractions being more intense for the woman, the contractions are very intense for the baby. When the uterus contracts, blood flow is restricted to the baby. With synthetically induced contractions, the time the uterus is contracted is a lot longer and more intense than with natural contractions. If a woman receives an epidural, the synthetic hormone must be raised and so the baby can be receiving very little oxygen through the blood while the mother is feeling no pain as a result of the epidural. This causes the baby to go into distress from lack of oxygen, often leading to emergency c-section.
Even for women who do not receive any synthetic hormones, the restriction of movement in the hospital setting, as well as the unrealized stress of being under a “time table” and having so many people who you have never met checking you, all leads to longer and more painful labors.
My labor was a perfect example of how an experience can be different in a hospital setting vs. a home setting. If I had birthed in a hospital, I would have been a perfect case for intervention. My water broke at 10am on a Saturday, but I did not even begin contractions until 1pm the next day, and delivered my daughter at 7pm that evening. If I had been in a hospital, I would have been on a “24 hour” time table from the moment my water broke, because of the “risk of infection”. If I hadn’t started contractions by the end of the afternoon the first day, I would have been pressured to begin Pitocin or something else to jumpstart my contractions. The error in this thought process is that there is a risk for infection only when lots of different people are doing checks on a woman, and in a hospital where there is more chance for infection based on the number of sick people in the surrounding areas. My body took a different time table, and still birthed a beautiful baby girl.
When women choose to have a homebirth, the possibility of receiving any pain medication is completely removed. When you don’t have that option available, you focus on what your body is capable of and the process it was designed to do. Your mind gears up for the birth extremely differently than when you go to a hospital thinking “I’ll try natural and get pain meds only if”. That is what Gisele is talking about.
I would not describe my birthing at painful. Intense, oh definitely! It was the most intense, difficult thing I have ever done in my life. But at no point did I think I wanted to go to a hospital and receive medication. I was in the moment, bringing my baby into the world.
In the end, yes the result that everyone wants is a healthy baby and happy mama. That is the line that is used by many people who are defending hospital birthing, or who have had an intense, intervention-filled birth. The flaw in this logic is that homebirths are statistically safer than hospitals births, especially in the United States. The United States has the second highest infant mortality rate in developed countries. We are also very highly ranked in mother mortality in developed countries. These are both in spite of the fact that Americans pay more for birthing than any other country even comes close to. We are the only first world country that delivers a majority of its babies in hospitals. All other first world countries deliver less than 30% of their babies in hospitals, and yet their mortality rates are far lower than ours.
I am not against hospitals or OBs. Not in the least. We need both! Hospitals are amazing centers of healing for sickness, full of highly skilled professionals who help our society immensely. But I do not believe that pregnancy or birth is a sickness that needs to be healed. OBs are trained to be surgeons, and they are very well trained! We do have births that require true emergency c-section (probably only 1% of those labeled emergency c-section were a truly unavoidable emergency), and I’m SO glad the OBs are there for those situations. But I don’t believe we need surgeons delivering our children a majority of the time.
All that to say I am so happy to hear that Gisele had a waterbirth at home and is going public with her experience. I hope this helps the American women become more informed about birthing and their options.
Women give birth like this everywhere these days especially in CA.
Do some research before you judge.
for me, the very small possibility of anything going wrong in the births was far overshadowed by the very high likelihood that myself, my baby, or my husband would be exposed to communicable diseases in a hospital. the two times i’ve been hospitalized for surgery i came home with strep throat the first time and then the flu the second time around. MUCH rather be in my home, which, while hardly “sterile”, doesn’t contain anything we’re not already breathing. IMO, as long as you’re attended by a qualified midwife, and have a hospital or birthing center to get to if problems should arise, home is far, far safer for all concerned.
If everything goes fine, home-birth might be nice. Despite the fact, that I would not like to give birth in my own bath tube… what a mess?
Anyway, if there is a serious problem and you would need a hospital you will need some time to get there, which might become dangerous.
However, how many women on earth have a hospital to give birth in?
It is kind of a privilege. We might be much too worried, but I also went to the hospital, because I had to have a C-section. Each in her own fashion
I gave birth 13 days ago to my first child, whom we actually named Benjamin too. I had full plans of going natural- no epi, narcotics, IV, anything like that. Well by the time I hit 5cm I was begging for it all lol I got the epidural and it was the perfect decision for me. I pushed for 20 mins and felt everything but the pain. It was amazing and I’d give birth 1,000 times over if I was promised an experience like that every time.
That’s really scary. I’m glad that they’re OK.
My daughter started out with doing a water birth, but unfortunately it didn’t go as planned and she was rushed to the hospital for an emergency c-section. As my son-in-law said ” a hundred years ago, I would have lost them both”. Everything did turn out ok, they were both in the hospital for 10 days.
In my area, midwives are trained nurses. They also won’t agree to offer their services if you live more than a certain distance away from a hospital, in case you need to be rushed there.
I completely agree.
Amy,
I’m glad to hear your family is well after that experience.
That is the exact reason why I would never consider a home birth. You just don’t know what could happen and it’s not worth losing any lives over. Just my opinion.
Many of my friends have opted for water births at home. I wish I had done that with mine but it wasn’t so common at the time.
wow i don’t know where i’ve been, but i don’t remember hearing that she gave birth. congrats to them!
That is going to be a beautiful baby!
God NO. I was like “drugs please” okay maybe I didn’t say “please” but they knew I wanted them. lol
No way, I gave birth in a hospital both times. Why on earth would I want to be at home? By the time I had my second child, I was looking forward to those 2 nights in the hospital, alone.
LOL!
Gave birth in a hospital with an epidural.
Both of my cousins had home-water births and loved it. No complications thank goodness. They say it’s a different experience unlike any other.