Four Years of Canadian Birth Data Finds Home Birth as Safe or Safer Than Hospital Birth

My friend’s daughter is expecting for the first time. She and her husband are trying to decide the best place to have their baby. She assumed she’d have the baby in the hospital, which is the default choice in the United States. But every time she’s been to the obstetrician so far, she’s felt rushed, bullied, and belittled.

So now they’re considering home birth.

I’m not sure that young adults faced with medical decisions these days spend much time reading peer-reviewed scientific literature but my friend’s daughter’s dilemma about where to have her baby reminded me about a study I read years ago.

This study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, found that planned home births with a midwife in attendance had comparable or better outcomes than hospital births.

The researchers looked at outcomes from over 2,800 planned home births attended by the same group of registered midwives over a 4-year period in British Columbia.

They found that women who planned home births had lower rates of invasive and negative interventions than women who had planned hospital births, whether the hospital births were attended by midwives or medical doctors.

Women birthing at home were less likely to experience:

• Augmentation of labor with oxytocin or amniotomy (artificial rupture of the fetal membranes)
• C-sections
• Electronic fetal monitoring
• Episiotomies
• Use of drugs during labor

Women who had a planned home birth also had fewer severe tears and postpartum hemorrhaging.

In addition, the number of health problems among women who had home births was much lower than among women who had hospital births.

In fact, home birth proved safer in almost every category measured.

What about the baby?

In this Canadian study, newborns born at home had fewer incidents of:

• Birth trauma
• Meconium aspiration
• Need for resuscitation at birth
• Need for oxygen therapy beyond 24 hours

There were no infant deaths among the women who planned to give birth at home and delivered their babies as planned.

However, babies born at home were at a slightly higher risk of being admitted to the hospital after birth.

The researchers hypothesized this was for jaundice treatment, for which the babies born in the hospital would simply stay longer.

Interpreting the data they collected, the Canadian research team wrote: “Planned home birth attended by a registered midwife was associated with very low and comparable rates of perinatal death and reduced rates of obstetric interventions and other adverse perinatal outcomes compared with planned hospital birth attended by a midwife or physician.”

This was a highly controlled study of all comparable births attended by the same group of midwives and comparable physician-attended hospital births.

Many American doctors badmouth homebirth, accuse homebirth midwives of being incompetent, and generally discourage American women from planning to birth at home.

This study from Canada is part of a large and growing body of careful research that shows that the American bias against delivering babies at home is not guided by science, but by politics, business interests, and misinformation.

My hope is that my friend’s daughter will feel respected, empowered, protected, and safe, wherever she decides to give birth.

Related posts:
“I Just Hope I Don’t Poop!” Why Birthing Moms Need Not Worry About Pooping During Labor
Everyone I Know Had a C-section, What’s the Big Deal?
They Said This Vaccine Would Protect Us Against Cancer. They Lied.

About the author: Jennifer Margulis, Ph.D., is an award-winning science and health journalist. A former contributing editor at Mothering magazine, she has published articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and on the cover of Smithsonian magazine. Paying for a subscription to Vibrant Life costs less than one cup of coffee a month and helps promote independent ad-free uncensored health journalism.