This excerpt is from ICAN, posted February 28, 2014. See the full article here.
by Karen Troy, PhD
The Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) recently published data from a large and well-tracked series of planned home births, the result of a home birth registry program that was initiated in 2004 (1). The data set included nearly 17,000 planned home births attended by a mix of midwives including CPMs (79%), CNMs (15%), and other unlicensed midwives. Within this cohort were 1054 women with a history of cesarean section who were planning a vaginal birth after cesarean – VBAC – at home. (This is also referred to within the birth community as "HBAC" – home birth after cesarean). Within this subgroup, 87% had successful vaginal births, with 94% of those births occurring at home and the remaining 6% occurring after a transfer to a local hospital. This success rate is substantially higher than the 60-80% success rate reported across other large hospital-based cohorts (2) and likely reflects the high level of commitment to and support of natural birth, both from the mothers and their care providers.