A HSE audit recommended that no one who lived more than 30 minutes’ blue-light distance from a maternity unit should be allowed to have a home birth Photograph: Enda O'Dowd
Peter Boylan: No. Home births can be safe in many cases – but not for first-time mothers
Home birth can be a safe option for low-risk healthy women, with one critical exception – their first birth. This is my firm conclusion based on attendance at thousands of births over more than 40 years as an obstetrician in Ireland, the UK and the USA. This view is supported by extensive clinical data including the landmark Birthplace in England study of 2011, which followed nearly 65,000 women who had healthy pregnancies and began labour with no known risk factors. The study found that while birth overall is safe wherever it happens, the rates of complications for home births, including stillbirth and brain damage to the baby, were three times higher than for births in hospitals.
First births take longer than subsequent births and require higher rates of intervention such as Caesarean section. During home births, about half of first-time mothers require emergency transfer to hospital for reasons including slow progress of labour, pain
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