Home births are safer. Women who give birth at home suffer far fewer complications than those who decide to have their baby in hospital.
In fact, women who opt for a hospital delivery are more than twice as likely to suffer complications compared to a home-birther, and are more than three times more likely to suffer post-birth hemorrhage-provided it’s not the woman’s first baby.
But even for women having their first baby, the home birth option is still a safer one. For these, just 2.3 births per 1,000 home-births had complications compared to 3.1 hospital births, say Dutch researchers, who studied the outcomes of 146,752 births. The Netherlands has the highest rate of home births among Western countries, and the figures bore this out: of the births reviewed, 63 per cent were home births.
So would a similar safety profile be seen in other countries? Possibly, say the researchers, but the high rate of home-births in Holland means the country also has more trained midwives able to ensure a safe delivery.
(Source: British Medical Journal, 2013; 346: f3263).
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