The Birth Place Study (2011)

Birth Place Study

Dec 30

If you’ve been browsing this site for more than about 10 minutes, you’ll probably have seen me refer to ‘The Birth Place Study (2011)’ at some point! In 2011, researchers reviewed the labours and births of 64,000 low risk women, which provided us with an excellent resource to compare birth place choices.

Based on the PLANNED place of birth (not necessarily where the baby ended up being born, but where it was intended to happen at the start of labour), researchers compared everything from interventions to adverse outcomes for baby; rates of tearing to rates of augmentation (speeding up labour.) You can read the full study (it’s long!) here, or I have included a summary below.

The Birth Place Study can be a helpful tool to reference when deciding where you plan to have your baby.