For many women, the height of luxury is soaking in a hot bubble bath. While the bath itself is very relaxing, the real allure of it is a half hour of no responsibility – and for the very lucky, no interruptions.

However, many women are like Gina Ritter of Wappingers Falls, N.Y., who didn't feel comfortable taking baths while she was pregnant. "I couldn't take baths when I was pregnant," she says. "Hot water just makes me go completely weak. I don't know if it raises blood pressure or what, but I would get out of the tub and feel like my heart was beating in my ears. My body felt weak and exhausted. But if I kept the water cool, I froze, so I just skipped them altogether."

Besides feeling like Goldilocks (trying to find a temperature that is just right), a lot of women avoid baths during pregnancy because of old wives' tales. "There is a myth that you can't take a bath while pregnant," says Dr. Randy Fink, an obstetrician in Miami, Fla. "You hear things like 'you'll drown the baby,' which isn't true." He says these myths cause anxiety when a mother-to-be doesn't need it.

Dr. Fink and other experts recommend – and encourage – pregnant women to take regular baths, as long as the water is warm. "As long as she isn't bleeding and doesn't have a ruptured membrane, a warm bath is soothing, especially on the lower back," says Barbara Dehn, a nurse practitioner at Women Physicians OB/GYN Medical Group in Mountain View, Calif. She does recommend that when soaking in the tub, keep the abdomen above water.

A hot bath (and this includes sitting in a hot tub or spa), however, should be avoided. "When a woman is pregnant, she is carrying around 60 percent more blood volume than normally," explains Michelle Collins, a certified nurse midwife in Nashville, Tenn. "Couple that with her progesterone relaxing the blood vessels [and] when she sits in a hot tub of water, her blood vessels dilate and the blood pools out of her extremities. She then goes to stand up, and she is very lightheaded."

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