Is Home Birth Safe?

An in-depth Swedish study of the attitudes of five home birthing couples recently appeared in Midwifery. The three main reasons couples chose home birth over a hospital birth were the desire for a natural, uninterrupted birth, the desire to have control over the birthing process, and trusting the midwife couples had chosen to help them with birth. Even though the couples were concerned about potential risks of birthing at home, they were willing to shoulder the consequences of their decision and wanted to avoid the risk of being deprived of that decision-making power in a hospital. The overriding theme was the couples’ fundamental trust in the ability of a woman to give birth, and their feeling that it would be easier to relax and go with the forces of birth in an environment where they felt safe. Two excellent Web sites for learning more about home birth are the British site, www.homebirth.org, that lists numerous birthing studies, and in the U.S, , gentlebirth.org. A midwife locator is offered by the American College of Nurse-Midwives at their site.