More women want to have babies at home, despite a chronic shortage of midwives The Government has promised that by the end of next year all women will be able to choose where and how they give birth.
A revolution is under way in how women give birth, and it is surgery, drug and even hospital-free. Inspired by celebrities such as Charlotte Church, Davina McCall, Thandie Newton and Maggie Gyllenhaal, record numbers of mums-to-be are having their babies at home. More pregnant women are braving the pain and forgoing elective Caesarean sections in certain parts of the country because local midwives are teaching them that birth is a natural, not a medical, procedure in the vast majority of cases.
Many women are also increasingly worried about hospital infection rates. One home-birth hotspot is Bridgend, South Wales, where one in four babies were born at home last year.
Although home births in England shot up by 10 per cent in 2006 against 2005, at 16,923 they were still just 2.5 per cent of all births. Mums-to-be in the South-west lead the way: West Somerset has the highest proportion of home births in the UK at 14.2 per cent, due to strong local midwife teams.
The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/huge-rise-in-number-of-home-births-796618.html
