Deciding on Home Birth

Objective: To explore the decision-making processes of women who planned home births and to generate an emerging theoretical description of these processes.

Design: Qualitative descriptive study using grounded theory.

Setting: A certified nurse-midwifery home birth practice in a midsized city in the United States.

Participants: Eleven adult women who planned home births with certified nurse-midwives.

Methods: We conducted semistructured, in-depth interviews with participants to discuss their decision-making processes regarding planning for their home births. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. We used open, selective, and theoretical coding and constant comparison to analyze the data.

Results: The core category in the decision-making process regarding home birth was Claiming Maternal Space. The three main themes under this core category were Awareness of home birth, Movement from conventional perinatal care, and Shelter Building for labor and birth.

Conclusion: Our results suggest that women who plan home births greatly value agency during perinatal care. The core category Claiming Maternal Space represented how participants solved the problem of decreased agency in conventional perinatal care. Further research is needed to validate the emerging theoretical description and explore the association between agency and perinatal outcomes.