A new study has found that for low-risk pregnancies, there is no increased risk for home births with a midwife compared to deliveries in a hospital under a midwife's care.
Researchers compared almost 11,500 planned home births with the same number of planned hospital births in Ontario to determine the risk of stillbirth, neonatal death or serious outcomes for newborns.
Lead researcher Eileen Hutton of the midwifery education program at McMaster University in Hamilton says the risk of adverse birth outcomes differed little between the two groups.
The incidence of stillbirth or neonatal death was 1.15 per 1,000 births in the planned home birth group, compared with just under one per 1,000 in the planned hospital birth group.
But Hutton says women who gave birth in hospital were more likely to have interventions such as labour augmentation, assisted vaginal births or cesarean deliveries, compared to those who delivered at home.