2023-11-20 11:35:52
While she was due to give birth at home, a 37-year-old woman died, along with her unborn child, following complications. The practice is legal in France, but very rare.
Births possible, but poorly supervised. A 37-year-old woman and her unborn child died Friday, November 17 in Ille-et-Vilaine, while the future mother had chosen to give birth at her home, a double autopsy being carried out this Monday. What rules govern home births in France?
A legal practice…
In France, a pregnant woman is perfectly free to give birth at home if she wishes, with no law prohibiting this practice. “Women are free to choose where and with whom they wish to give birth,” recalls the Professional Association for Accompanied Home Birth (Apaad), on its site.
“(Home birth) is legal, reimbursed by Social Security and by certain mutual insurance companies,” specifies the association.
Since the Kouchner law, passed in 2002, all healthcare professionals must acquire professional civil liability insurance. But their staggering cost remains very difficult for private midwives to access and many are therefore not insured.
…more rare
Currently, however, few mothers give birth far from the hospital. Between 0.5% and 1.9% of deliveries take place outside of hospitals, according to a large INSEE study carried out between 1980 and 2016, the majority of which are medically assisted.
Apaad, for its part, indicates that 1,439 women began prenatal follow-up in 2022 with a liberal midwife from the association to give birth at home, 83% of whom actually gave birth at home, the rest having had to give up for health reasons.
Midwives who can perform home births are also few in number, less than 100 according to Apaad, insufficient to meet needs.
Discouraged by the authorities
However, health authorities do not encourage this type of birth. The cause is the risk of mortality, which is higher during complications for home births than for hospital births.
In fact, to give birth at home, a pregnant woman must be in perfect health and have no significant risk factors. Doctors and medical associations also recommend that future mothers give birth at a maximum distance of between 30 and 45 minutes from a maternity ward, in case complications arise.
For the vice-president of the National College of French Obstetrician-Gynecologists Alexandra Benachi, who speaks to BFMTV, home births run the risk of a “delay” in “management of hemorrhage, for example, or infections.”
“We will have to transport the woman and the newborn to a maternity ward. In these cases, we know that delay in treatment is a major element of morbidity and mortality,” she warns.
The desire for a less medicalized environment
However, some women continue to make this choice, explaining that they prefer to give birth in a familiar environment, at this important moment. Sarah, a mother who gave birth at home twice, explains to BFMTV that she prefers to “limit medical interventions”.
“I don’t understand why we have to go to hospitals for something natural. It’s not an illness,” she argues.
On social networks, videos promote home birth, some of which garner several hundred thousand views. We see young women giving advice to pregnant women regarding giving birth at home. But be careful, these Internet users do not always have medical training and can encourage risky practices.
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