Okay, so now over the next two videos, we're going to talk about home birth.

And by the end of this video and the next video, you'll be able to describe why people

choose home birth and which people are good candidates for home birth.

You'll also be able to discuss the research on home birth in the United Kingdom, Canada,

and the United States, and you'll be able to describe

what factors can make home birth less safe.

We'll start in this video first with the United Kingdom and Canadian research, and then

we'll move on to the U.S.-based research in the next video.

So why do some people choose home birth?

In one study, researchers interviewed 160 women who had a home birth in the United States

and asked them why they chose a home birth.

The top five most common reasons that families talked about were the belief that home birth is safer, a desire to avoid unnecessary

interventions, previous negative hospital birth experiences, a desire to have control over birth

decisions and choices, and a dislike of hospitals, doctors, or medically managed birth.

Other less common reasons included a desire for privacy and to avoid strangers,

trust in birth as a normal healthy process, wanting to avoid being separated from their

baby, a preference for midwives, increased options such as delayed cord cutting or water

birth, a decreased risk of cesarean birth, having a more comfortable

atmosphere, having the family involved in the birth, in other words, having their children be

present, and a history of having a fast or precipitous labor where it's difficult to get to the

hospital in time. There's a lot of controversy over who should be eligible to give birth at home.

Many countries have standardized lists of what makes someone a good candidate for a home birth,

...