Not sure if you were planning a hospital, home, or birth center birth, but if you go to the hospital and they offer a water birth, they may have the regular tubs you usually see or they may have an actual water birth suite. Mine did and the water came out of this pipe in the ceiliing, so even though they had to refill it bc it got too cold (we didn't know transition was going to last 9 hrs
) they just filled it with me in there. The temp needs to be a certain temp for the baby. So even if you think you dont need it as hot, the baby does. Also a great thing was they this big hook type thing on the ceiling and you could drape a long sheet through it. That was perfect counter pressure for when i would squate to push. I was able to hold and bear down like no other. Plus there was a place for your head to go if you wanted to lay down. And it had these two bars if you wanted to do hands and knees you could flip over and hold the bars with yoru hands while you did so. that was really nice.
My biggest advice is to make sure the water goes to the nipple line. This will accomplish 2 things. First, in order for the water to be the most effective, it needs to cover your bump entirley. So if you do it at home or wherever, make sure you get a deep enough pool. Ive noticed some whater birth pools arn't very deep
second, the reason why the water going to your nipple line is important, is because when nipples are stimulated in labor it can release oxytocin. Oxytocin is important for the stimulation of contractions. This will help your labor along
