In a reverse recommendation, Britain’s national health service now advises healthy women to deliver their babies at home or in a birth center, rat
her than a hospital. A 2011 study found that for low-risk pregnant mothers, giving birth in a traditional maternity ward increased the likelihood of surgical intervention and therefore infection.
Moreover, hospital births were more likely to lead to cesarean sections, episiotomies and epidurals, which numb the pain of labor but also increase the risk of a protracted birth that requires forceps and damages the perineum.
Mark Baker, clinical practice director for Britain’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, suggests that first-time low risk mothers deliver in a midwife-led unit and second-time low risk mothers deliver at home.
Not everyone agrees. “We believe hospitals and birthing centers are the safest places for birth,” said Dr. Jeffrey L. Ecker, chairman of the committee on obstetrics practice for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Under Britain’s integrated health system, should problems arise “they have a process and protocol for appropriately and quickly getting you somewhere else,” which is not the case in the United States.
Dr. Ecker also said he did not foresee the British guidelines coming to the U.S. anytime soon, because doctors would worry about losing patients to midwives. That’s an irrelevant concern in Britain’s taxpayer-funded system.
