There have been few comprehensive studies into home births until now. The largest study of its kind has found that for low-risk women, giving birth at home is as safe as doing so in hospital with a midwife, BBC News reports.
"We found that for low-risk mothers at the start of their labour it is just as safe to deliver at home with a midwife as it is in hospital with a midwife," said Professor Simone Buitendijk of the TNO Institute for Applied Scientific Research.
"These results should strengthen policies that encourage low-risk women at the onset of labour to choose their own place of birth."
Louise Silverton, deputy general secretary of the Royal College of Midwives, said, the study was "a major step forward in showing that home is as safe as hospital, for low risk women giving birth when support services are in place.
"However, to begin providing more home births there has to be a seismic shift in the way maternity services are organised. The NHS is simply not set up to meet the potential demand for home births, because we are still in a culture where the vast majority of births are in hospital.
"There also has to be a major increase in the number of midwives because they are the people who will be in the homes delivering the babies."
Mary Newburn, of the National Childbirth Trust, said: "This makes a significant contribution to the growing body of reassuring evidence that suggests offering women a choice of place of birth is entirely appropriate."
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) said it supported home births "in cases of low-risk pregnancies provided the appropriate infrastructures and resources are present to support such a system.
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