"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)

Good link Avril. If I may quote the NHS on their considered review of these research findings...

"when the home birth was assisted by a certified midwife there was no increase in mortality compared to a hospital birth."

So to accurately draw concludsions the newspapers should really say

"home birth trebles risk of baby mortality.
(when baby is delivered by the postman)"

Shocker.

You can get the article - it's on the ajog.

But I was just going on this

BBC better source than Metro methinks!

I think this is some pretty irresponsible reporting.

Shows the dangers of making comparisons without making it clear what you are comparing with.

It's worth noting that the paper itself is scaremongering rather than (or probably as well as) the reports in the press. I posted this on another thread, but will put it here, I'm in Canada and noticed this in the news with a completely different slant, which was about the quality and integrity of the study.

Here is a description of the study from Dr. Michael Klein, an emeritus professor of family practice and pediatrics at the University of British Columbia (Canadian data was used)

"It's a politically motivated study that was motivated by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology who is unalterably opposed to home birth, and they probably were quite happy to publish this article because it fits with their political position,"

He went on to say that he thought the study was "crap" using data going back to the 70's, some very very small studies (it's a meta-analysis) that should have been excluded using normal standards for such studies. Plus most of the data was from the US, where home births are not attended by trained midwives (because the doctors have a bit of a stranglehold on a very very medicalised approach to birth).

There is a link to the abstract of the study in the article:

www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/07/02/home-births-safety.html

Thank you nooka and avril, very helpful. Unfortunately, it's always the headlines that people remember, especially when they confirm individuals prejudices.

I suspect that's why the paper was commissioned and published.

i had a wonderful hb with dd2 in January. i ummed and ahhed an awful lot over safety. Then I discovered Ina May Gaskin and found a wonderful doula who was very much a fan of her methods. If you read her 'Guide to Childbirth' she presents very clearly her own statistics on hb, albeit in the US, which show, at least as strongly as I needed them to, that low risk hb can be safer than hospital birth; lower risk of infection, lower risk of medical intervention (prevention of the dreaded 'cascade' they talk about in NCT classes), lower rates of PND even.

What I love about her is the way she's reclaiming birth from this kind of scaremongering reporting in the media, and reinstating it as the spiritual, natural bodily experience it nearly always can be. Chill out and don't believe the hype. Yes, things can and do go wrong, but quite often its hospitals themselves which cause them to do so.

More scaremongering over homebirths in the DM today - their article about Dannii Minogue quotes some antipodean doc stating that first time mothers shouldn't have homebirths...erm...
Mine didn't work out (EMCS in the end, oh well!) but I'd still encourage any other first timers to consider it. Maybe that's because I trained as a HCP and can actually evaluate whether or not such a study outcome relates to the UK or not! Bah.

Mary Newburn of the NCT wrote a good response in the guardian today
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/08/home-birth-risk-babies-die

there was a comment in the BMJ today stating that the data was collected from several countries. This ranged from the UK, where midwives are highly trained to deliver independantly without obstetricians, to the USA where midwives are not trained to do so.

Thus, the USA data could be regarded as confounding?