Birth Centers Totally Crush It

We’ve been convinced for a long time that birth centers are the way to go for many low-risk women seeking to have a safe vaginal birth.  A new study now shows that birth centers not only deliver high-quality birth experiences, primarily through midwifery care, but they also drastically lower c-section rates and maternity health care costs.  That’s what we call a win-win situation.

The new study was conducted by the  American Association of Birth Centers (AABC) and published in the most recent issue of the Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health, the official journal of the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM).   They included more than 15,500 women who received care in 79 midwife-led birth centers in 33 US states from 2007 through 2010.  They found that fewer than one in sixteen (6 percent) participants required a cesarean birth compared to nearly one in four (24 percent ) similarly low-risk women cared for in a hospital setting.

Read the whole study and find out for yourself how midwives and birth centers are paving a new path for safe childbirth practices here in the US.