Home Births Are More Dangerous!
Article by: Dr Zoe Arugay

Photo: Newscom
 

It is true that a planned home birth is safe in certain low risk mothers. In addition, a midwife with sound clinical judgement can save a mother when she brings her to the hospital at the right time because there may be some unforeseen circumstances that may necessitate instruments, diagnostics, or even procedures that can be done stat in a hospital setting.


A paper published last week in the American Journal of Obstetrics supports this. According to a new international study by doctors at Maine Medical Center, home births are significantly more dangerous than hospital births for babies. It goes on to say that normal newborns are three times as likely to die after a planned home birth than after a planned hospital birth. When all babies were counted, including those with congenital problems, the risk is twice as high after planned home births, the paper said.


This was met with a lot of heated reactions. Some home-birth midwives and researchers are calling the paper biased.


But these are based on available facts. Joseph Wax, a doctor of maternal and fetal medicine at Maine Medical Center and the lead author of the paper, further explained that "There are still facts that need to be uncovered and hopefully this will encourage folks to embark on those studies."


Wax and the Portland-based research team combined previous studies from several developed nations, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.


But while the study highlights the risks of having home births, hospital births are not without any risk as well. Other findings in the study showed that that hospital births are more risky for mothers because they are more likely to experience bleeding, infections and other complications.

However, despite the difference, the risk of babies dying is small whether born at home or in a hospital. Fifteen in 10,000 babies died after having a planned home birth, compared with four in 10,000 after a planned hospital delivery, according to the study.




A 20-something pregnant woman got scared of being scheduled for a C-section after her OB told her she has a condition called placenta previa where the placenta attached to the uterine wall close to or covering the cervix. Despite the insistence of her husband, family and friends, she had a home birth. The midwife she hired has good reputation so it was unclear why she was too confident to deliver the baby at home despite her placenta previa condition. And so it happened that after giving birth, she kept bleeding. By the time she reached the emergency room, she was in hypovolemic shock. We tried resuscitating her, but it was far-advanced that she eventually succumbed. The midwife in question had launched a war against us, the doctors who saw her patient, because "insisting" the patient has placenta previa would make her culpable. Apparently, she didn't know of the patient's condition until she saw the ultrasound results from the attending OB days after the patient's death.


This is just one of the many horrors of child birth. It's a rather extreme example given this news item. But the fact is that it happened. And it happens that there are pregnant mothers out there who will insist on home births for a variety of reasons despite their OB's warning. The only plead I have with these moms is that they have to be open to the possibility of being brought to the hospital stat should your midwife detect any problem.


As for me, when that time comes I'm definitely having it in a hospital setting.