Home births: Transfer to hospital, statistics?

[morningpaper]

From looking through studies on the internet, it seems that unplanned transfers to hospitals for homebirths are:

• 40% for first babies
• 10% for subsequent babies

Does this sound about right? Anyone know?

Sounds pretty accurate, given how many first births either go a bit pearshaped OR prove to be rather less Natural and Bearable than one would be led to believe.

I reckon if you have your second baby at home you do so with grim realistic determination. Not to speak of the fact it's usually over quicker (I laboured at home for around 20 hours of my first birth - by that time my second baby was 13 hours old).

Best place to ask is the yahoogroup for homebirth, homebirthUK. Someone there will know off the top of their head.

I was told that the stats for homebirths dont take into account those that were planned as against those that happened very quickly, or those of a lot of mums who didnt register for homebirth, attend midwife/antenatal. the figures for first time seem very high if you presume that most homebirths only go ahead if midwife is happy with baby's position/mothers health at 37/38 weeks.

morningpaper, that sounds about right but would include transfers during pregnancy as well as during labour. One of the best papers I know of is by Hey et al published in the BMJ on planned homebirths in the Northern region - probably one of the ones you've found.

yeah tab is right. statistics include anyone who starts labour at home...
this includes things like, people who don't realise they're pregnant, teenage girls who have tried to hide it from everyone, premature labour...

there don't seem to be any statistics for planned homebirths

starlover the paper I quote is about planned homebirths, and there are a few other research papers too. You're right that you can't get the info from routine statistics on babies born at home.

the paper elliot mentions is here i think.

12% of the women in the study who planned homebirths and got as far as established labour at home were transfered to hospital. Mostly due to slow progress in the first stage.

Sounds a lot better than 40%!

i'm 19 weeks with number one and hoping for a homebirth.