The familiar comfort of home makes it the safest birthplace for healthy, low-risk women. In the safety of their own homes, women are less likely to experience complications of labor, such as hypertension and meconium staining, which may be brought on by stress. The freedom to move about as desired decreases both length of labor and the need for pain medications, therefore lowering the risk of maternal exhaustion, fetal distress, and cesarean section. Whereas a woman's home usually contains only microbes to which she and her baby are immune due to to daily exposure, the hospital is full of disease-causing microbes, many of which are resistant to most antibiotics. In fact, any person being admitted to an American hospital has a 4 to 10 per cent chance of acquiring a hospital based infection.
Newborn babies are especially susceptible to such infections due to their immature immune systems.
Birth is by nature unpredictable and in some instances families who choose to birth at home may have to transfer to the hospital for technological assistance. The small chance of such a transfer being necessary should not deter women from planning to birth at home. Birth is a family event and, with very few exceptions, happens most naturally and safely in the mother's home. Families who birth at home with the help of midwives generally report far greater satisfaction with the birth experience than those who have given birth in hospitals. Women who birth at home and the midwives who attend them understand that birth is as safe as life ever gets, and that attempting to control birth actually causes more complications than it prevents.