Birth Statistics

There has been a lot of controversy lately about the birth center where I had both of my daughters.  Their story has caused a lot of midwife bashing to occur.  I have read and heard comment describing the use of a midwife as "unwise, dangerous, and uninformed.". All I want to do with this post is to give some statistics.  I do not want to debate or argue.  I want to show what the numbers really say.  There were some stats that I wanted to find that I could not.  I could not find any stats for out of hospital births, or midwifery stats on a national level, so I just posted the stats from my birthing center, The Baby Place.  It seems easier to find stats for individual birth centers than to find national averages.  I found a number of studies and blogs about the low mortality rates of out of hospital births, but none of them gave any links to where they got their info, so I did not want to post it.  I also wanted to post the mortality rate and c-section rate for our own local hospitals, but I could not find them.  It seems they are not required to publish those numbers.  So here are the numbers I have so far.  If I find more stats I will update them later. The US and Idaho numbers are from 2010 except the maternal death rate. US infant mortality rate: 6.39 per 1000 US c-section rate: 32.8% US maternal death rate: 12.1 per 100,000 (in 2003) Idaho infant mortality rate: 5.43 per 1000 Idaho c-section rate:  24.8% Idaho maternal death rate: 13.8 per 100,000 The Baby Place infant mortality rate: 1.9 per 1000 C-section rate: 2.3% No maternal deaths (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/states/ID_2012.pdf) (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_03/sr03_033.pdf) (http://www.healthandwelfare.idaho.gov/Portals/0/Health/Statistics/2003%20Reports/2003%20Annual%20Report.pdf) (http://www.thebabyplacehome.com/connect/with-resources/)