Characteristics of women giving birth at home in Sweden: a national register study.

Abstract

The objective of the study was to estimate the proportion of planned home births in Sweden and to identify maternal characteristics of women giving birth at home. This case-control study included register data of births from 1992 to 2001 in 352 women giving birth at home and 1760 women giving birth in a hospital. Four hundred thirty-nine out-of-hospital births were found during the study period, and the proportion of planned home births was less than 0.5/1000. Women with home birth were more likely to have 4 children or more (odds ratio 3.7 [1.4 to 9.9]), be born in a European country outside Sweden (odds ratio 3.5 [1.8 to 6.8]), have a family income below the median (odds ratio 2.9 [2.0 to 4.1]), not work outside the home (odds ratio 2.4 [1.7 to 3.5]), have a high level of education (odds ratio 2.1 [1.5 to 3.0]), and be older than 35 years (odds ratio 1.7 [1.1 to 2.5]). Women with planned home births appear to be a group having a different lifestyle, compared with Swedish women in general.