So I have to admit that I have been thinking about having another baby. Not today or even this year but we will probably start to try again at the end of this year. So that also leads me to think about birth, and how I want to have my future babies.
I have always known that home birth is quite safe when attended by a midwife and with proper prenatal care in a low risk pregnancy. Since everything went really well with Xander’s birth I am thinking that home birth might be a possibility for subsequent pregnancies as long as I remain low risk and the pregnancies themselves remain low risk.
During my studying about home birth I recently came across a new study, published in the current edition of the Medical Journal of Australia showing that “perinatal mortality rate similar to that for planned hospital births, but a sevenfold higher risk of intrapartum death”.
Here is a great rebuttle of the information provided on the surface of the study from an Australian blog, Croakey. Some of the most important parts are listed below:
- The facts are there was no difference in perinatal mortality (stillbirths, and neonatal deaths within 28 days of birth) between home and hospital (7.9 vs. 8.2 per 1000 births). For those actually born at home the perinatal mortality rate is 2.5 per 1000 births, which is comparatively low.
- There were no differences in Apgar scores (how well babies are at birth) or admission to Neonatal Intensive Care Units between the two groups. Infants born at home were half as likely to receive specialized neonatal care compared to planned hospital birth.
- Three of the deaths were thought to be potentially preventable and related to the model of care. These were the baby born after the waterbirth at home; the second twin who was born after an intrapartum transfer– and the baby born after being very postdates. Therefore, there were 3 deaths in 16 years – two of which had risk factors present. That means that there was only one death where there were no risk factors in the 16 year period.
- There were a number of positive benefits. There was significantly less intervention in homebirth group: caesarean section rate of 9.2% (home) vs. 27.1% (hospital) (one third less); instrumental birth rate of 4.4% (home) vs. 12.8% (hospital) (one third less); episiotomy rates of 3.6% (home) vs. 21.7% (hospital) (one sixth less). Planned homebirth women were three times more likely not to have perinea trauma than the planned hospital group (there was seven years missing data on episiotomy and perineal injury). None of this appeared in the media.
Please read the full study here and the full review on Croakey here.
