You are seeing it more in the news, and more on social media. Mothers of all walks of life are choosing to give birth at home rather than the traditional hospital setting.
The increased popularity of home-based births can be credited to the release of a documentary film The Business of Being Born, which chronicled the birth experience of television celebrity Ricki Lake. Since its release in 2008, home birth rates have slowly and steadily increased. But the United States’ rates still don’t compare to those in other countries, such as the Netherlands, where about 17 percent of births occur at home.
In our practice, 85% of clients initially desire birthing in a birth center setting however, after learning more about home birth as an option, 40% of those mamas-to-be decide to give birth inside their home instead. A South Coast Midwifery fun fact is that the majority of our returning clients who chose the birth center location for their first birth, choose home as the location for subsequent births.
The emerging consensus from journalistic articles, like the multi-national study recently published by McMaster University, is that homebirth is just as safe for low risk pregnancies than the traditional hospital birth, or one administered at a birth center like South Coast Midwifery.
So, what are some of the reasons you may to choose a home birth? Well, first, it’s just nice to be in a setting that is the most familiar to you. Childbirth is one of the most intense, exhilarating, exhausting, and fulfilling things a woman will do; why not do it in your own sanctuary where you get to dictate the scene, instead of a place where you are a bystander to the procedures being performed on you, like in the hospital.
There is no need to pack a bag to camp out in a hospital, or rush into a car to experience a portion of your labor on the freeway and have the potential to get stuck in traffic.
Nature rarely adheres to our schedule; labor can start at any point in a full 24-hour day. If you have planned for a home birth and your water breaks at 4 o’clock in the morning, then your plan of action becomes calling your midwife, your doula, and support group, and not rushing out of the house and possibly executing your plan to have someone watch your kids and get them to school.
Homebirth can take place in any kind of home, whether you live in a house, or an apartment. The only thing that is necessary in most home birth scenarios is that your home be within close proximity to a hospital in case complications do arise.
Although there is a bit more responsibility associated with a home birth, including personal laundry, placenta handling, set up and take down of personal items and supplies, etc., after your home birth, your birth team will clean and organize the space, and leave it just how they found it.
Imagine the comfort of having an experienced midwife by your side during labor, knowing she’ll be there for as long and help you achieve that most important goal: giving birth at home.
The staff who work in birth centers are also trained to perform necessary emergency measures if needed; but with a home-birth experience comes one more advantage – they’ll tuck away new baby so parents can enjoy their own bedtime routines before heading off themselves!
