Report: Utah home-birth rate double national average
A new report shows Utah women are choosing home birth at a rate double the national average, and those moms tend to be older and have more education.
The Utah Department of Health report says 2.12 percent of Utah moms chose home birth in 2013, compared to less than 1 percent in the country as a whole.
It says that women who had a planned home birth were more likely to be 35 or older, have education after high school, and be married.
The report analyzed birth certificate data from about 200,000 births between 2010 and 2013. About 3,700 of those were planned home births.
Author Shaheen Hossain says the data showed that in low-risk pregnancies, the health of babies born at home compared well to babies born in hospitals.
