Unattended Home Birth

Abstract

Four years ago in a class I was teaching, a man and his wife declared they would deliver their baby at home among friends. A doctor friend would stand by, but they would assume responsibility for the birth themselves. They had their baby at home, and a second child two years later. They were the first of many couples I met in prenatal classes who chose to bypass the hospital in order to have unlimited contact between mother and child after birth, greater father involvement, and personal control of the labor and delivery. In 1971, 25 percent of the couples taking prenatal classes at the Institute of Family Relations, Los Angeles, California, selected home birth. Some were attended by medical doctors but many were unattended(1). In the same year, 100 unattended home births (UHB) took place in the San Francisco Bay Area each month(2). The local Childbirth Education