"For Low-Risk Births, Home Is As Safe As Hospital"

I just read a great article, on Quality Health, put out by Reuters Health in New York. It states that for low-risk births, home is as safe as hospital.

"Low-risk women should be encouraged to plan their birth at the place of their preference, provided the maternity care system is well equipped to underpin women's choice," Dr. A. de Jonge, from TNO Quality of Life, Leiden, the Netherlands, and co-researchers note in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

I am tired of people looking at me like I have two heads when I say that I am planning to give birth at home, that I have done so for all four of my babies, and that I wouldn't want it any other way. Even if it is free of charge in the hospital, and I'd have to pay out of my pocket for a midwife at home. (we have socialized medicine here in Israel.)

I think the tide is turning.

"The findings, they conclude, indicate that with proper services in place, home births are just as safe as hospital births for low-risk women."

This study was done in the Netherlands, a place that has a lower rate of both maternal and fetal deaths than the US. Maybe we should listen to them.

People are getting wise to the motivation (from the hospital's side) behind most hospital births, and I am so glad to see more people seeking alternatives. The documentary movie The Business of Being Born gives great details about hospital births; watch the trailer here: http://bit.ly/f1Tzi

Cindy Crawford chose to have a home birth and shares her story in 4 parts. Here is the link to watch part 4 of her interview:

http://bit.ly/MwvTp

If you want to watch all of it, you can follow links on that site to the previous webisodes.





You can read the full article from Reuters here: http://bit.ly/KqNXW