No one will ever convince me home birth is a good idea. Both my sister had complications one had two cesarean birth the other had a a baby that had the cord wrapped around the neck in the womb. I do not think that would have turned out well with a home birth. Seconds not minutes count in this stuff.
Thanks to the good doctors I have 5 healthy nephews. I know other couples who home birthed with a midwife and one of them lost their baby. If it would have been in the hospital they would have had a 50/50 chance on the survival.
Today you can have you midwife and family doctor at the hospital with you and then if things start looking bad the surgeons are right there. I think that is one of the best answers. I know midwifes do know some tricks many doctors refuse to acknowledge they work. Such as getting the baby to roll over in a bridge birth case or even end to end if the head is not lining up right. Pressure points I think are used.
My wife tried talking me into the home birth I took her to the local grave yard and showed he 50 graves of children that were buried with in days of the birth and asked do you really want to chance it? Lucky for me she listened as my oldest had to have shots right after birth because of blood transfered from mom to baby through a small scratch. They had opposite blood types and my oldest within 30 minutes started to go into shock. It was caught right a way proper shot given and all was good in the hour. If I had to have waited 15 more minutes how much slower would have that recovery have been if at all.
Just my two cents.
Home births as safe as hospital births: International study suggests. The study examined the safety of place of birth by reporting on the risk of death at the time of birth or within the first four weeks, and found no clinically important or statistically different risk between home and hospital groups. Source 2g.