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A homebirth is defined as any birth which does not take place in a facility, such as a birth center or hospital. It doesn’t actually have to be your home, it could be your parents’ or your best friend’s.

Reasons To Choose Homebirth

• It is the birthing environment you will have the most control over. In your own home you have the best shot at deciding what visual elements, sounds, smells and faces will surround you when your baby is born. You can lower the lights, play Reggae music, or invite anyone you want to have around you to attend, if you like. Women who give birth at home do report a greater sense of control over the experience and this sense of control generally contributes to greater overall satisfaction with the birthing experience.

• At home you avoid unnecessary medical interventions such as episiotomy or constant fetal monitoring. A carefully conducted study compared the cesarean section rates between patients who used midwifery services for their homebirths from The Farm, a well-respected birth center in Tennessee, to physician-attended hospital births. The hospital c-section rates were 16.46 percent of all the births. The Farm had a c-section rate of only 1.46 percent! Many other studies have confirmed the markedly lower c-section rates in homebirths. With homebirth, your baby’s birth will proceed gently and naturally unless a real emergency occurs. If you are transported to a hospital during a homebirth, statistics indicate that you and your baby are just as likely to have a good outcome as if you had started out in a hospital setting.

• Many experts believe that you, and your baby, will have a reduced chance of getting an infection if you are not in a hospital. Hospitals are notorious for spreading staph, and other infections, around to patients. You are already used to the bacteria present in your home and have probably developed some immunity to them.