About Barefoot Birth Pools
Why choose us?
Barefoot Birth Pools have been supporting families with their home waterbirths for over 10 years and have worked with thousands of families during that time. Having worked as a Birth Doula, Natal Hypnotherapist and Postnatal Group Leader founding company director, Shona, is able to offer advice and guidance on all aspects of your homebirth plans and pool hire, this service extends throughout the hire whereby phone support is offered seven days a week including evenings.
Operating from our town centre store we have dedicated cleaning rooms for our pools. With each pool being set up for 12-24 hrs between each hire the pools are cleaned on arrival and again prior to packing using the NHS protocol guidance developed by birth pool manufacturer, Edel Immersys, using the recommended chemical cleaners, Tristel and Clinell. This guidance is also followed for the cleaning and testing of all other birth pool hire equipment.
We are proud to be recommended by so many Midwives, Doulas and Homebirth groups across the country relying almost exclusively on word-of-mouth to promote our services. We continue to support raising the profile of homebirths through our Community Birth Pool schemes for new homebirth initiatives and our Waterbirth Study Days for Birth Professionals.
Our hire services and equipment are all covered under our comprehensive insurance policy. Providing a deposit for your equipment during your hire is a requirement of this coverage - please find out more about these policies below and also during your final checkout, by clicking on the Terms and Conditions.
Cancellations, returns and refunds
We understand how unpredictable preparing for your labour and birth can be and that sometimes plans change. We do not ask your EDD during booking, but generally advise the pool only arriving from 37 weeks as this is when most community teams support homebirths from. You are, of course, very welcome to have the pool delivered earlier, just select the date from the drop down list that works best for you. Please be aware of our refund policy though if you do choose to have your pool delivered before your homebirth support has begun.
Please find below a table explaining the process for refunds following a cancellation.
- Pool hire cancelled before dispatch - full refund less £10 administration fee.
- Pool hire cancelled on the day of dispatch/on day of delivery (pool must be collected following day) - full refund less £35 administration fee and standard return courier costs (not restricted postcodes where the fee may be higher).
- Pool cancelled after day of delivery - your hire has begun and no further refunds for your pool hire can be made.
As stated in our Terms and Conditions of hire we do not offer refunds or partial refunds for hire pools returned unused. This is to ensure fairness to all of our families as there may be many reasons that equipment is not used.
Our hire charges cover the time that your equipment is expected to be on loan to you and is not available for others to hire, along with the cleaning of all equipment - all items that leave our premises are tested and cleaned on their return to the shop regardless of whether the hirer has 'used' the equipment. We also hope that all families will check their equipment and have a 'dry run' to make sure they are happy with how it all works and that it fits in the room they are planning to use etc. We ask families to open and check their equipment as soon as possible after delivery and do not wish to encourage families not to do this by offering refunds for unopened boxes. Sadly, we also found in the past that by offering refunds on unopened liners that some hirers used our pools without the liner - which we strongly advise against therefore this is now included in our equipment hire cost and cannot be refunded separately.
Barefoot Birth Pools agrees to refund in full all products purchased in addition
to your hire or purchased in our Waterbirth shop that have been returned, unused and sealed within 30 days of receipt unless for hygiene reasons we are unable to do so (items falling in this category have the exception to the policy noted in the product description).
In the unlikely event of an item purchased via Barefoot Birth Pools being faulty, we will of course, send a replacement product immediately to you. It is your responsibility to check your items within 3 days of receipt to allow us adequate time to replace any damaged, missing or faulty items.
Please use the contact information detailed below to arrange refund or replacement of any products or to discuss any of our policies further.
