This week on The Baby Tribe, Afif and Anne return after the Christmas “break” (parenting, but with more chocolate) and ease back in with a totally non-controversial topic: home birth and free birth. We start by clearly separating free birth (no medical care, no trained attendant, outside healthcare infrastructure) from planned home birth (full antenatal care, risk assessment, trained midwife support, and an escalation plan). This episode is not about shaming women or taking choice away. It’s about risk, and what happens when birth stops being straightforward. We unpack what can go wrong for mothers, including postpartum haemorrhage and sepsis, and why peripartum deterioration can be sudden, making rapid multidisciplinary response crucial. Then we shift to babies, discussing why the initial steps of newborn resuscitation can happen at home, but more advanced interventions cannot, and why that matters when minutes count. We also talk about water birth, why labouring in water is different from delivering in water, and the rare but serious neonatal complications reported in the literature. Finally, we discuss Irish transfer realities using data from a recent audit of the HSE home birth service (2012–2021), including transfer rates and travel times, and why “transfer if needed” is not always the reassurance people think it is. If you’d like to support the podcast, subscribe to HeadStuff Plus for Baby Tribe Shorts, where we break down the science, the headlines, and listener questions.

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