"Home birth 'trebles risk of baby's death' "

[bintofbohemia]

Excuse the dodgy source - I actually saw this in the Metro.

What's the deal, is this bending of figures or is this actually legitimate? (Had two HBs myself with no ill effects)

You need to read the orignal research very thoroughly.

This article gives more info.

"The president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Professor Sir Sabaratnam Arulkumaran, said there was no clear picture of the relative safety of home births, because it was not possible to conduct randomised trials, where women would be allocated either to give birth at home or on the labour ward.

"The finding that the consequences for the baby are more severe needs to be carefully considered by women, policymakers and care providers," he said. "Certainly, the move towards offering women a choice in their place of birth in the UK needs to be weighed against such evidence."

But he said that a recent study in Scotland had shown that any difference in outcomes for babies disappeared if women considered at high risk of complications during pregnancy and delivery were taken out of the equation. Screening to pick up such women was important, he said, and so were arrangements to get a women to hospital if something went wrong during a home birth. "Mothers should not be alarmed as long as there is a transfer mechanism if there is a difficulty," he said."

Much of the data was gathered across europe where maternity/midwife cover for birth at home is no where near the standard of UK midwife care.

Thats the jist I'm getting but will reread again.

Ooops, posting in haste - forgot to actually include link!

Article in metro was very short but said it was treble for planned HBs which surprised me. Did not realise the figures included whole of europe. (My friend's due an HB on Sunday and Id hate this to freak her out.)

(So the Mail is badly written scaremongering with a mistake in the second paragraph? I hate that rag.)

I have been wondering about this one all day - I really want the original article but can't access it.

Scaremongering DM and GMTV did highlight the 3 x risk bit but when you look at the figures that is based on a 0.003% chance versus a 0.01% chance.

I would like to know if they looked only at planned home births in healthy low risk women - or lumped them all in together.

"...when you look at the figures that is based on a 0.003% chance versus a 0.01% chance. "

That has just reminded me of this article-
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7937382.stm

I am currently in the early stages of pregnancy and am toying with the idea of a home birth. I'll be doing plenty of research but sensationalist headlines don't really help there isn't enough info given in the article to help a mother make an informed decision, it's just scary and unhelpful.

I want to see the original article too. This is just the Metro's take on it, and we all know how the media distort scientific findings to suit their own sensationalist agendas.

Anyone else remember that BF study that was reported twice in the same paper a year apart, and the first time they claimed it found BF was best and the second time they claimed it found that BF was no better than formula?

Surely there ought to be some sort of duty to report the actual facts and let people interpret them, rather than saying - oooh, it's dangerous and you'll all die.

I had 3 midwives all to myself when I had DS1. Can't imagine I'd've got that in hospital.

It is actually quite significant that home births have x3 mortality risk, considering that only the pregnant women considered "safest" go on to have HBs.

All other things equal, on the basis of this pre-selection of low-risk pregnancies, home birth fatalities should be much less than hospital birth ones.

yes, but we need to see the paper. previous studies have i think looked at hospital vs out of hospital births so include deliveries in cars, concealed pregnancies etc .

and home births in usa are i think very different to uk and there may not be a trained midwife, many states don't have midwives but lay midwifes and the mothers may not have much ante-natal care so it may not be picked up if the pregnancy is high risk and accurate dating from scans not performed.

"It is actually quite significant that home births have x3 mortality risk, considering that only the pregnant women considered "safest" go on to have HBs." Not sure about that, I needed a c-section yet the mws were really pushing for HB.

I'm going by the various threads on MN where women complain they won't be able to go down the homebirth route because they have a minor risk.

Your MWs must have been exceptionally ignorant single-minded.

You can say that again though was everything but funny at the time. In all honesty I am sure majority of HB are offered to low risk women only but when I was pregnant there was a massive push for HB in my area and I suspect I wasn't the only one who should have not been offered one let alone tried to force into having one.

This always went without saying imo. I understand why people want a home birth, but it stands to reason that if the baby gets into some sort of unforeseen difficulty, you're better off being in a hospital already. It's naive to think that that's not true.

The 3x stat already takes account for the difference in risk - it only compares like-for-like (i.e. low risk pgs in either case)

The problem is that it is for planned home births, so if you changed your mind before going into labour and went to hosp you would still be counted as a home birth. Without knowing how many of the planned home births ended up being hosp births it's hard to know what it means...

Without seeing the actual paper its not really possible to say whether this statistic is likely to be applicable to low risk women giving birth in the UK with two midwives present.

Have to be mindful of the way papers can completely distort research findings - I will try and find a link to the way a Norwegian paper on BF was reported twice by the same paper with completely different headlines each time.

ib - How are you so sure about the details of a paper we can't read? Or am I missing the link to the actual research?

My understanding of "planned homebirth" would be "births at home that were planned, as opposed to accidental". It would not include intended homebirths that ended up in hospital for an emergency and thus became hospital births.

Magalyxyz is right, by the way.

Avril that is a very interesting analysis of the paper.

So in the UK, where the standard model of care is to have two midwives present at a home birth, the level of risk is not increased.

i had 2 mw at my home birth. my first birth was in hospital and was a horrible experience. 2nd was at home and was wonderful.

i think you have to weigh up the risks. are you near enough to a hospital if things go wrong? are you high risk? what the pregnancy been like? common sense really.

NB Metro are OWNED by the DM - so equally scaremongering.