Respect Women's Choice for Home Births: Doctors Genevra Pittman - Reuters
go to original April 29, 2013

A Visit With a Traditional Midwife in Oaxaca, Mexico (hrhcare)

Although hospitals and birthing centers are the safest places to have a baby, pediatricians said today that women who choose to give birth at home should be supported and that setting made as safe as possible, as well.

Planned home birthing, they said, may be an option for healthy moms-to-be who are due to have a single, on-time baby. A certified nurse-midwife, midwife or doctor should be present and a previous agreement made with a nearby hospital in case transfer is needed, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) policy statement.

Its Committee on Fetus and Newborn wrote Monday that less than 1 percent of all births in the U.S. are homebirths, but that rate has been increasing among white women in recent years.

"The experience of having a baby is very different at home than it might be in a birthing center or a hospital," said Dr. Kristi Watterberg, the policy statement's lead author and a pediatrician and neonatologist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

"We would like to help foster professional interactions and support systems that could make every baby's chances the best they can be."

Read the rest at Reuters

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