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SAFETYIt's one of the most common questions people ask about home birth: "Is it safe?" The answer: If you are a healthy woman working with a qualified prenatal and birth attendant, the research on safety equally supports your choice to birth in hospital, birth center, and at home. The evidence favors the out-of-hospital setting for lower intervention rates. It favors out-of-hospital birth also in the measurements of mother and midwife satisfaction. You can confidently individualize your pregnancy and birth choices to satisfy your deepest instincts and desires. Midwives help make birth safe by prioritizing partnership and continuity. Honest and open communication with your midwife is key in preventing problems before they occur and in promptly detecting a complication should one arise. Midwives provide close, careful, and continuous assessment of you and your baby throughout pregnancy and labor, as well as through the postpartum period. At Community Midwives, the same midwife who attends you in pregnancy will be with you at the birth of your baby and through the tender days of your new family. A qualified midwife carries first-line response equipment and treatments similar to those found at any community-level hospital. These include IV equipment and fluids, anti-hemorrhagic medications, oxygen for both mother and baby, a bag and mask to deliver oxygen, doppler ultrasound to assess fetal heart tones, and an established system of medical collaboration and transfer. I and my assistants are regularly recertified in neonatal resuscitation and CPR. I have helped train many area EMTs and paramedics in home-to-hospital transfer and promptly access their services when needed. Due to the potential that always exists for transfer to medical care, I recommend you visit a physician or hospital nurse-midwife prenatally and pre-register at your nearest hospital. This allows staff to initiate measures prior to transfer and make your welcome there more efficient and comfortable. 
The transfer rate for Community Midwives is 8% in labor and postpartum. Only 4 urgent transfers have occured in my 7 years of practice. The great majority of problems that may arise in healthy mothers and newborns respond rapidly to first-line measures at home. Click on the link below for an expansive review of research and policy regarding the safety of home birth, as well as full research texts: www.gentlebirth.org
“It is inherently unwise, and perhaps unsafe, for women with normal pregnancies to be cared for by an obstetric specialist. ... Midwives and general practitioners, on the other hand, are primarily oriented to the care of women with normal pregnancies, and are likely to have more detailed knowledge of individual women.” Murray Enkin, et al, A Guide to Effective Care in Pregnancy and Childbirth. Oxford University Press, 2000, (a summary publication of the international Cochrane database of systematic reviews). 
“Midwives are the most appropriate primary health care provider to be assigned to the care of normal birth.” Maternal and Newborn Health/Safe Motherhood Unit of the World Health Organization, Care in Normal Birth: A practical guide. World Health Organization, 1996. “Midwives attend the vast majority of births in those industrialized countries with the best perinatal outcomes...” Coalition for Improving Maternity Services, The Mother-Friendly Childbirth Initiative, 1996 PLANNED HOME BIRTH WITH A QUALIFIED MIDWIFE IS SAFE"There is no reason why home birth should not be offered to women at low risk of complications and it may confer considerable benefits for them and their families. There is ample evidence showing that labouring at home increases a woman's likelihood of a birth that is both satisfying and safe, with implications for her health and that of her baby." The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), April 2007(view the full text here)
American Public Health Association, “Increasing Access to Out-of-Hospital Maternity Care Services through State-Regulated and Nationally-Certified Direct-Entry Midwives (Policy Statement)”. American Journal of Public Health, Vol 92, No. 3, March 2002. “Several methodologically sound observational studies have compared the outcomes of planned home-births (irrespective of the eventual place of birth) with planned hospital-births for women with similar characteristics. A meta-analysis of these studies showed no maternal mortality, and no statistically significant differences in perinatal mortality risk in either direction.” Murray Enkin, et al, A Guide to Effective Care in Pregnancy and Childbirth. Oxford University Press, 2000 (a summary publication of the international Cochrane database of systematic reviews). “...a woman should give birth in a place where feels is safe, and at the most peripheral level Maternal and Newborn Health/Safe Motherhood Unit of the World Health Organization, Care in Normal Birth: A practical guide. World Health Organization, 1996.  |
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"Recognizing the evidence that births to healthy mothers, who are not considered at medical risk after comprehensive screening by trained professionals, can occur safely in various settings, including out-of-hospital birth centers and homes...APHA supports efforts to increase access to out-of-hospital maternity care services...”
at which appropriate care is feasible and safe. For a low-risk pregnant woman this can be at home, at a small maternity clinic or birth centre, in town or perhaps at the maternity unit of a larger hospital. However, it must be a place where all the attention and care are focused on her needs and safety, as close to home and her own culture as possible."