A new analysis suggests that giving birth in a hospital is considerably safer than having a baby at home or in a birthing center. Researchers analyzed data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2006 to 2009 on almost 14 million births, including 130,000 non-hospital deliveries. Their results appear online in The American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology. They examined both early death (within seven days of birth) and neonatal death (within 28 days) among singleton full-term babies without congenital malformations. No matter how they parsed the numbers, babies born outside hospitals had higher rates of death.
