Home Birth

Home birth is a wonderful option for women who want to birth in the comfort and privacy of their home, and who are considered at a low risk for complications.

Is Home Birth For You?

Do you want:

• To labor and give birth in the comfort and familiarity of your own home?
• Fewer medical interventions?
• To be able to eat and drink as desired during labor?
• To choose who will be will you when you give birth?
• labor to be treated as a normal process?
• Your baby to stay with you after birth with no separation?
• One on one attention from a trained midwife through labor, birth, and initial postpartum period?

Many insurance companies cover home birth. For those with no insurance, a home birth cost less than a hospital birth.

Do you meet the criteria for home birth?

• Are you willing to accept responsibility for self-care?
• Do you have a good social support network for the whole childbearing cycle?
• Do you have realistic and positive expectations about natural birth?
• Do you want to birth at home; can you agree to the criteria specific to home birth (breastfeeding, no pain medication, preparing birth participants)?
• Are you "low risk"? This means that you have an excellent prognosis for a normal, healthy pregnancy, delivery, and postpartum course.

Is home birth safe?

• All birth has risk just as all of life has risks.
• Risk assessment is an ongoing process done by the midwife during pregnancy, throughout labor, and even in the postpartum period.
• Thirty years of research on the safety of home birth has shown that planned home births for women with low risk pregnancies with a professional midwife in attendance are as safe or safer than hospital birth.

I am currently working with Mary McLane, CNM, and am not taking any personal clients. You may contact Mary at puffey@verizon.net or at 717-413-6742. Mary works in Lancaster and York county and in the Harrisburg area.

If you want an easy to read summary of the research done regarding home birth, check out The Thinking Woman’s Guide to a Better Birth, by Henci Goer; Berkeley Publishing Group (1999).