New Study: Homebirth Safety = Hospital Birth Safety

Many thanks to Empowering Birth blog for posting this:

Perinatal Morbidity and Mortality in a Nationwide Cohort of 529,688 Low-Risk Planned Home and Hospital Births

The results? Read it and rejoice:

"No significant differences were found between planned home and planned hospital birth (adjusted relative risks and 95% confidence intervals: intrapartum death 0.97 (0.69 to 1.37), intrapartum death and neonatal death during the first 24 hours 1.02 (0.77 to 1.36), intrapartum death and neonatal death up to 7 days 1.00 (0.78 to 1.27), admission to neonatal intensive care unit 1.00 (0.86 to 1.16)."

And the conclusion? Read it and rejoice again:

"Conclusions: This study shows that planning a home birth does not increase the risks of perinatal mortality and severe perinatal morbidity among low-risk women, provided the maternity care system facilitates this choice through the availability of well trained midwives and through a good transportation and referral system."

And check out the study size - 529, 688 births!! This is no tiny study... This is major stuff, people.

No doubt the American Medical Association and ACOG (American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists) will henceforth drop their resistance to and propaganda against homebirth and join wholeheartedly in promoting it as a valid choice for birthing women!

All right, when you've all stopped laughing hystericallyand picked yourselves up off the floor, let's get serious.... We all know that cold, hard evidence has no affect on die-hard beliefs with those who are dedicated to resisting homebirth for the simple reason that it is homebirth.... But maybe mums who are wondering about safety issues can take heart. Of course, this is not the first study proving homebirth's safety - the CPM 2000 study comes to mind. But we can always use more!

Fun stuff!!