In totally awesome news today, the final results from the home birth trial running at Sydney’s St George hospital have been published, and the result is a great one.

From The SMH:

A study of the first 100 women booked to use the service found 63 per cent successfully delivered at home with no intervention or pain relief and minimal vaginal tearing.

Thirty women were sent to hospital before going into labour and seven were transferred during labour, one of the lowest transfer rates of any similar program in the world.

Read the full article here.

This is a great step in finding a happy medium between home birthing and hospital/birth centre birthing. I hope after seeing the results from the St George study more hospitals will consider taking up a similar program and make a safe and inexpensive home birth an option to more parents to be.