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Interesting topic--it seems to me, also, that homebirthed babies
are a bit bigger at birth. However, I think we would need a
thorough analysis, versus anecdotal information, to truly see if
there is a statistical difference between birth weights of
homebirthers versus hospital-births. Outcomes would have to be
adjusted for confounding variables like: smoking rates,
alcohol/illicit drug intake, age/weight/parity of the mother
before pregnancy, average time of gestation, risk factors like
diabetes, thyroid conditions, multiple gestations, etc. I'd also
like to broach a potentially sensitive topic that I've been
recently stewing over: I was reviewing the 2005
perinatal/neonatal mortality rates as published by the World
Health Organization. It includes all deaths of babies occurring
from 22 WGA to 4 weeks after birth, including stillbirths. What
I noticed is that the United States had arguably the LOWEST
rates of any industrialized country on the list. It's