At one time, it was usual for every baby to be born at home. Now, most babies are born in hospital and the proportion who are born there is increasing every year. Many of us feel sad that babies are not born a home any longer, but there are very good medical reasons for arranging deliveries in hospital. Many of the unusual emergencies, that occur during labour and need treatment for the sake of either the mother or the baby, appear very suddenly and often cannot be predicted. In hospital, it is possible to take the immediate emergency action which is not possible at home. It is also possible to improve care during labour by using sophisticated machinery to control the length of labour and to monitor the health of the baby.

Of course some things are lost when a baby is born is hospital. One would like it to be family event so that the new baby can be introduced to brothers and sisters and grandparents in a family house rather than in the strange atmosphere of a hospital. The individual care that a doctor and midwife give at home is often more pleasant than the more impersonal feeling of a hospital. It is not easy in a hospital to keep a mother and her baby close together. However, hospitals are aware of the problems and are doing their best to make your stay more pleasant; if you have any practical suggestions for the improvement of maternity care, you should give them to the clinic or hospital where you are going for delivery.

There are many experimental schemes being started at the moment. Many hospitals run an early discharge system so that you can go home at 48 hours, or even much earlier, at about six hours after the baby birth. This has to be arranged before delivery, so remember to ask the ante-natal clinic, if you want to leave hospital early. Sometimes there will be reasons to keep you in hospital such as a caesarian section or jaundice in the baby so do not bank on everything going absolutely without a hitch.

Remember that there are practical reasons for arranging your delivery in hospital, because it is safer for you and the baby. This is particularly important when the doctor feels that you are more likely to have a complication than another woman; he may then insist that you should be delivered in hospital. Also nowadays it is norm and almost all babies, especially in the city, are born anyway in the hospital.