Interested in home birth, hospital birth or private midwifery care? Questions or comments? Email Melissa Maimann or call 0400 418 448.
The federal government has been urged to push on with its plans to tighten homebirth laws, after a new study found the practice to be more risky than conventional hospital deliveries.
A comparison of South Australian births between 1991 and 2006 found … babies were seven times more likely to die from complications during a homebirth than a planned hospital delivery.
They were also 27 times more likely to suffer asphyxiation during labour …
The Australian Medical Association, which is opposed to homebirthing, says the study throws more weight behind the government’s planned overhaul of maternity care.
… The overhaul has outraged homebirth groups, which say the practice will be forced underground, a concern that was also highlighted in a recent Senate inquiry.
… the proposed laws won’t stop women from wanting to have a homebirth.
“… they will put women in quite a dramatically unsafe situation because they won’t be able to find a registered midwife to attend to them.”
She says doctors are also unlikely to support the practice because of their own insurance concerns.
Homebirth Australia secretary Justine Caines, who has had seven successful homebirths, agrees and says the planned changes are a major erosion of women’s rights.
“Birth is very personal and a decision each woman should have the right to make” …
“So the AMA’s responsibility should be to make the practice of homebirth as safe as possible whether they like it or not.”
Melissa Maimann, Essential Birth Consulting 0400 418 448
I wanted to weigh in here to make issue with the fact that women are not allowed to VBAC at birth centers. I feel that this is a major problem that needs to be addressed. Taking the Canadian requirements into context, which promote homebirth for women who have had 1 LSCS, it should be the norm here for women who are wanting a VBAC to labor and deliver in a birth center. I personally would only deliver a baby outside the hospital system, private or public, after my “hospital experience”. My last child was delivered at home because I did not fit the birth center criteria. This added a lot of risk physically because my baby decided to arrive before my midwife. She was birthed into my own hands, which was a very easy process, but WHAT IF? A birth center was my first choice. Also, when in the world are they going to get rid of the 1 cm per hour rule regardless of the baby’s condition, and the multiple VE’s that go along with? What a load. I’d guess that someone needs to put in a complaint to the Human Rights Commission on this.
I believe too that women ought to be able to labour in birth centres. The St George Birth Centre in Sydney and RPA birth centre will accept VBAC women. St George monitors more often with a doppler and expects that women will receive one-to-one midwifery care in labour.
I believe the expansion of biorth centres for *all* women will be beneficial … even if it was simply a matter of converting some of the standard delivery rooms into birth centre rooms, so that every delivery suite has birth centre rooms.
Congratulations on your awesome birth
The 1cm rule has been challenged and 0.5cm is appropriate in some hospitals overseas, but not here!