Home births 'as safe as hospital'

The BBC News has reported:

"The largest study of its kind has found that for low-risk women, giving birth at home is as safe as doing so in hospital with a midwife."

"...a comparison of "low-risk" women who planned to give birth at home with those who planned to give birth in hospital with a midwife found no difference in death or serious illness among either baby or mother.

"We found that for low-risk mothers at the start of their labour it is just as safe to deliver at home with a midwife as it is in hospital with a midwife," said Professor Simone Buitendijk of the TNO Institute for Applied Scientific Research."

Almost one-third of the women in the study who chose home birth were transferred to the hospital for complications, including abnormal fetal heart rate and the desire for epidural anesthesia, "But even when she needed to be transferred to the care of a doctor in a hospital, the risk to her or her baby was no higher than if she had started out her labour under the care of a midwife in hospital."

Please read the whole article here.