One of the great advantages of a home birth is that if anything goes wrong, it goes wrong slowly. Since labour is not artifically accelerated, there is time to deal with things like dropping heart rate or other signs of distress. The midwife monitors baby as well as mother, and will transfer them to hospital if she thinks there is need. Nearly always, they go on to have a natural birth in hospital. Section rates for planned homebirths in Ireland are 1%.

Midwives are also expert at keeping things normal. They can cope with things like cords round the baby's neck: "Stop pushing a second, ok, it's off, you can push again" or unusual presentations. They also have the equipment for things like miconium aspiration.

My midwife takes a lot of pride in having only done one episiotomy in her career. She encourages slow birth in natural positions and rarely has to deal with tears. When there is a tear, it's usually small. It does take more skill to stitch, but it heals up a lot better.

Don't confuse midwife-assisted homebirths with unassisted homebirths. Two totally different animals.

Just to be clear, Candice, in the Netherlands, homebirth is common when you have no risk factors, but it is not unassisted! My husband is Dutch, and was a homebirth, by the way.

Most midwives, first of all, will be the first to tell you if you have risk factors that preclude homebirth.
And when you are a good candidate for a homebirth, good midwives have a plan in place for cord problems or placenta problems, both of which can strike with no warning during birth, no matter how healthy you are. Cord problems can cause the baby to die within minutes. Placenta issues and bleeding out can cause the mother to die rather quickly.
I see people say "Oh, if there's a problem I'll just dial 911," and that's a mistake. While 911 arrives fast, it's not fast enough when it comes to a baby in distress.

I am glad we have a lot of options these days for childbirth, from home to birth centers to hospitals. I simply do not understand the attitude of it being somehow cooler or better or stronger for any particular choice. Do what works for you and your baby. If you are able to give birth at home, that's wonderful. If you end up in the hospital, fine. And tell people who try to impress you and indicate that you should do it their way to take a flying leap!!

I knew this but guess I didn't make that clear, sorry.

Most certainly I see unassisted as a choice that could carry more risks. But in my opinion as long as long as mom has had excellent care and both partners are extremely knowledgeable and prepared for problems that could arrise I see it as an option that doesn't show complete stupidity on the parents behalf. I guess in my naivete I just expect people to use sense and caution in the matter.




Too true. I had a very healthy pregnancy the last time but that darned placenta did not want to come out and then I had excessive blood loss. It wasn't to the point of almost needing to go to the hospital, but if for some reason I had been alone I wouldn't have been prepared for it.



Agreed, depending on 911 for emergency assistance with a birth is NOT a good idea.



A woman should choose what she feels is best for her and her baby. There should absolutely be no need to feel like you're are "less of a woman" if you have a pain killer, hospital birth, Caesarean, the need to abandon homebirth/birth center plans because of exhaustion (which almost happened with my best friend) or whatever. I just wish more people in the US would not look upon out-of-hospital birth as an unsafe thing and wanted to bring out the point that elsewhere in the Western world it is considered completely normal.

Okay, so I admit it, I'm a bit of Mother Earther and Ina May Gaskin is my hero

~ Candice

Agreed in all of your above statements. Why take the risk? And there are many.

Yes, reasons for csection are failure to progress (this is the MOMs choice though)....but also, we wheel moms back to the csection OR because baby is distressed....or heartrate is tanking fast, sometimes from the cord around the neck. When that happens, we need to RUN the patient back. There's no way of knowing which babies this happens to, and yeah...it happens to primites and multips. I'll admit, I know nothing about homebirths...do midwives hook you up to ultrasounds and toco's to monitor heartrate at your house?

Cords can go around babys neck waaaay before delivery, before baby has even even come down.

I dont know how long I could last waiting for someone to get me to a hospital and get a rope from around my neck.

You do not NEED to be hooked up to monitors for baby heart rate in order to have a normal delivery. Doctors do this because they like to be in control.

The amount of interventions a low risk woman is given in the hospitals makes any woman nervous and raises her heart rate and the babies.

Fetal monitoring in a low risk preganancy is not necessary at all.

And cords that go around a babies neck do not mean that the hospital is the best place for the child- the baby is not even breathing when in the womb, the baby gets all the oxygen from the cord. A midwife can easily unwrap the cord when the head is out.


And also, it is a big big misconseption that you can have a natrual birth in a hospital. Hospitals in America do everything possible to avoid natrual births. The epidural rate alone is over 90% in most hospitals, not to mention the huge c section rate.

I personally would never again trust a doctor with a vaginal birth because i found it to be horrible, and since i have no other option but to deliver in a hospital due to being high risk, i am all for c sections. If i am going to be in a hospital i might as well not be in pain.

I had three homebirths in the water. I wouldn't do UC, but I completely respect it. I mean, midwives carry oxygen tanks and we're 10 minutes BY FOOT from the best NICU in the country. I wasn't worried...

Sorry, just something that hasn't been stressed here at all. Everyone is defending their point of view BUT IMO, it is a personal choice. One is no better than the other...there are pro's and con's for each and the decision should be made taking into consideration the parent's choice, the risks involved, and the midwife or doctor's recommendations.

We literally could argue on for days on this subject! Personally, I delivered two in the hospital. The first was a really bad experience, but the second was FANTASTIC and redeemed my faith in the hospital system. I wouldn't imagine giving birth at home, but to each HER own!

Someone else may have the exact same experiences at home and couldn't imagine being in the hospital.

It's all about what's right for each individual situation.

Congratulations!! I planned a homebirth with my daughter who was born in March. Unfortunately I ended up with a c-section because her heartbeat was in the 180's.

I'm glad it went so well for you :-) I'll try a HBAC for sure.

Congratulations! I ended up having a C-section for my first and have had VBAC's since. I personally would not do home birth because of the small increased risk of uterine rupture.

good luck to you in the future!

I had both of mine in the hospitals and am glad I did. My second (who will be 10 years old tomorrow) may not be here if I had him at home, and I possibly wouldn't be either. We made it to the hospital 8 minutes before he was born. My labor was 35 minutes total and no, there was no intervention, it was fast all on it's own. He was born blue and the chord was around his neck very tight. The dr. managed to get his hand between the chord and the neck as he passed through the birth canal. I then began serious hemmoraging and loss lots of blood and had immediate surgery. My pregnancy was completely normal up until that point. An unassisted childbirth probably would have caused my son to die, and there is no way I would ever take such a risk just for my own comfort of being at home without medical intervention.

My child had the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck twice. My labor was prolonged, and the doc had to insert his hand & try to unwrap the cord as the child moved down the birth canal. My baby was resuscitated for the first minute of his life (ie. "bagged" with oxygen, whole respiratory team). My kiddo would not be here if I had done it at home. And the cord thing was totally unexpected -- the doc realized what was going on by looking at my labor patterns (ie. I was hooked up to fetal monitoring).

So though I respect you & am amazed by your story, I am glad that in my case I gave birth in a hospital.

LAwoman75, I just read your post. Scary thing we've been through. I can't imagine having to go into emergent surgery, but have known that & the hemorrhaging to happen to a friend of mine.

As you said, you truly do not have any indication of how the actual delivery will go based on the pregnancy. My pregnancy was also uneventful.

Patient Bill of Rights. You can choose to have a "natural" birth in a hospital if you desire. Getting an epidural is totally voluntary. You can write your own birth plan, as did I. And many hospitals have large, homey birth suites that fit a whole family if you choose. Finally, you can find out the C-section rate of your doctor beforehand. I chose one with a very low rate. I considered a nurse midwife, but not a lay midwife -- my sister worked for a law firm that dealt with a lot of birth injuries due to home births with lay midwives. I chose a family practice physician with midwifery skills. Just my choice, as I support women in any choice they make.

U.S. hospitals have all the same problems. However, we have choice in practitioner & can discuss with them all these issues beforehand. We can write our own birth plans, though some women don't know this.

There is a clear difference in quality based on the practitioner. It is important to look at the educational background and experience of whomever you choose. It's necessary to have a conversation with that person about all of the possibilities in birth outcomes, and how they would be handled.

Most home births are normal deliveries, and do not require any intervention. The argument for hospital births is access to emergency equipment and personnel if needed (ex. surgeons always on staff). There is always the big unknown, even if it's deemed a low-risk pregnancy. If someone chooses a home birth, it would be ideal to have a "backup plan" that considers how a baby or mom is transported to a hospital emergently if needed. There is always the risk in delay, though -- what if your plan doesn't work? What's the back-up to your back-up? The riskiest home birth is that which has no easy access to emergency staff/equipment.