Low-Risk Births Are Just As Safe At Home

A new study has found that low-risk births are just as safe at home as they are in hospital

Good news for moms that are looking for a little nudge towards having an at-home birth. There's a new study out of McMaster University was recently published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) and it suggest that low-risk births are just as safe at home as they are in hospital.

Researchers looked at 11,493 planned Ontario home births as well as 11,493 planned hospital births.

It’s no surprise that most people believe home births are much riskier than having your baby in a hospital, Eileen Hutton, one of the researchers in the department of obstetrics and gynecology and the midwifery education program said.

“There’s a huge stigma around home b, but I think that’s shifting,” Hutton said. “You’ll never convert those who are the true opponents of home birth. But it does provide some credibility for home as a choice of birth place.”

This is great news for midwives, who currently attend about 10% of birth, 20% of those occur at homes.

Researchers found about 75% of women who planned their at-home births had their babies at home, while 97% of hospital births occurred in the hospital.

Eight percent of at-home births needed emergency medical services, as did 1.7% of the in-hospital births. And women who gave birth in the hospital had more obstetrical interventions—labour augmentation, caesarean deliveries, assisted vaginal deliveries.

"Compared with women who planned to birth in hospital, women who planned to birth at home underwent fewer obstetrical interventions, were more likely to have a spontaneous vaginal birth and were more likely to be exclusively breast feeding at three to 10 days after delivery," the authors wrote.