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| Home birth 'as safe as hospital' says RCM - 04/23/2004 |
The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) today (Thursday 22 April 2004) reassured parents-to-be that home births are every bit as safe as hospital births.
This follows recent media stories about the sad death of a baby whose parents opted for a home birth but refused assistance from midwives. In this case the RCM stresses that the choice of place of birth did not affect the outcome.
Dame Karlene Davis, General Secretary of the RCM, said: 'Evidence shows that the health outcomes of planned home birth are as good as, if not better than, those for hospital birth. Indeed for many women home birth may be the safer option as it reduces the incidence of medical interventions and actions, which interfere with physiological processes.
'Birth is one of the most important events in a woman’s and her partner’s life. The birth of a child is a family event and yet too often babies are brought into this world outside of the family environment. The home environment facilitates physiological processes and emotional experiences of birth. Yet in the UK today, the overriding direction is for birth to take place not at home but within an environment normally associated with illness and disease. Thirty years ago when home birth, with midwife-led care, was the norm requests for hospital births had to be made on social grounds.'
She added: 'At the heart of Government policy is offering choice to users of NHS services. Pregnant women are no different. The present situation is that home births are widely available to women in some areas but not others. The RCM wants to see greater choice for women in all parts of the country, with home birth being fully integrated into the NHS.'
Women giving birth at home are more likely to feel relaxed in their own surroundings where care is driven by their needs and they are at liberty to create their own special, private, intimate space. This is in contrast to labour that is ‘driven by the needs of the institution to process women and babies quickly, rather than for the well-being of mothers and babies’ (Hunt & Symonds 1995).
Additional notes
· A study by the National Birthday Trust Fund in 1994/5 involving 6,000 planned home births and the same number of planned hospital births found that the home birth group had roughly half the risk of experiencing caesarean section, ventouse or forceps delivery, and were less likely to suffer postpartum haemorrhage. Babies in the planned home birth group who were born at home were significantly less likely to have low Apgar scores or need resuscitation, and they also suffered fewer birth injuries.
· Around 2% of births in the UK are currently home births. The figure in the Nee Netherlands, which has the highest home birth rate in Europe, is around 30%.
· The House of Commons Health Select Committee report ‘Choice in Maternity Services’ issued in 2002/3 stated: 'we see [home births] as a gateway to promoting normal birth and a spur towards midwife recruitment and retention.'
· The release of hormones, such as endorphins, that positively influence labour are affected by the physical and emotional environment in which a woman gives birth. |
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