Mental Health

Home Birthing Safer than Hospital Deliveries?

By S.C. Stringfellow | Update Date: Sep 19, 2012 09:42 AM EDT

Home birthing availability, in most western countries, is noticeably scarce. Perturbed by this statistic, a Cochrane review sustains that all countries should provide proper home birth services to soon-to-be mothers who would prefer not to have their children in a hospital but are unknowledgeable about how to set up and prepare for a home birthing option. 

Home birthing, according to senior researcher and statistician Ole Olsen of  the Research Unit for General Practice in the University of Copenhagen and midwifery lecturer PhD Jette Aaroe Clausen, can be as safe as hospital deliveries, with even less interventions and fewer complications; all that is needed is quick access to ambulatory services in case of an emergency and an experienced midwife. 

"A mother's comfort can determine a lot about birthing outcomes" says Ole Olsen. He adds, "If home birth is going be an attractive and safe option for most pregnant women, it has to be an integrated part of the health care system."

According to a press report by the University of Copenhagen, there are 20-60 percent fewer interventions, fewer cesarean sections, epidurals and augmentation among those women who plan a home birth.

And there is a reported 10-30 percent fewer complications, for example post-partum bleeding and severe perineal tears.

The reason, researchers report, is that without the rushed hustle and bustle that accompanies a hospital atmosphere women feel calmer and, without insistence from medical practitioners to push, prod, and simultaneously jump from patient to patient, stressed laborers can give birth at their own pace and in a more intimate setting:

"Patience is important if women want to avoid interference and give birth spontaneously," says Clausen to Copenhagen press. "At home the temptation to make unnecessary interventions is reduced. The woman avoids for example routine electronic monitoring that may easily lead to further interventions in birth."

While home birthing has become a very popular phenomenon among Danish mothers, the idea is still seen by many industrial nations as archaic and even dangerous, ideas which, researchers attempt to prove, are ignorant and fales. 

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