Yes! you can have a home birth for your first baby in chicago!
I hear it all the time:
“I just thought I needed to have my first baby in the hospital ‘just in case.’”
“I wasn’t confident enough to have a home birth with my first.”
…and then: “I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I wish I had considered home birth.”
Let’s break that down.
Sure, there are absolutely lots of important medical and personal reasons to plan a hospital birth — but that’s not what I’m referring to.
I’m talking about someone with a low risk pregnancy — like, super low risk — pregnant with one baby, and with no preexisting medical problems at the start of pregnancy (and being over 35 isn’t high risk by itself!) Someone who would like an unmedicated, physiologic birth and who feels called to give birth at home, but has that story going that “just because it’s my first, I should be at the hospital birth, “just in case” — and plan a home birth next time.
I’m not in the business of trying to convince anyone to have a home birth — but I do believe that everyone should have access to quality information to make the best choices for themselves. And the persisting myth that things will inherently be safer at the hospital for a first birth is not helping anyone make the most informed decisions about where to give birth.
Hospital birth is actually pretty new in the history of humanity. In the United States, “we” didn’t shift the majority of births to the hospital until around 100 years ago. We won’t go into all of the history here, but the subsequent medical management of birth, combined with the US’s for-profit health industry, has taken birth away from a community- and family-centered event and into a life event that anywhere from 18-50% of birthing folks report as traumatic.
Furthermore, our national cesarean birth rate has hovered around 30% for ages — about two times higher than what international public health experts believe to be optimal. Let’s drill in to look at a more specific, lower-risk population, or what the medical literature calls NTSV, or people having their first baby (nulliparous) at full term (37-41.6 weeks), and pregnant with a single, vertex (head-down) baby.
This NTSV population captures many of the very same folks who might be appropriate for a home birth, though it doesn’t account for other potential complications such as preeclampsia, uncontrolled gestational diabetes, and other complications that are not appropriate for home birth. The latest NTSV c-section rate currently stands at 25%, so even this lower risk population has a one in four chance of major abdominal surgery to give birth in the United States.
Let’s compare that to what someone having a planned home birth with a qualified midwife might expect.
Nationally, about 10% of home birth midwives’ clients transfer care to the hospital during birth or the immediate postpartum. According to the most recent available data (from 2019), and matching my own data from 2025, home birth midwives’ national c-section rate is about 5% (meaning, of those 10% that transfer to the hospital, about half will have a surgical birth).
Method of birth is, of course, just one part of our start to new parenthood and how we are able to physically recover, feed our baby, and take care of ourselves and our baby.
The other piece is how we move through our labor, birth, and postpartum. Do we feel empowered, autonomous, respected, and centered as we move through this transformative experience that is birth-giving? All too often, and possibly for up to half of all births in the United States, the answer is no — and birth becomes traumatic.
We may feel coerced, manipulated, rushed, insulted, violated, minimized, and controlled. This is far more likely to be the case for immigrants, indigenous folks, Black birthing people, and other people of color, as well as gender diverse and disabled birthing folks.
It doesn’t have to be like this.
Everyone deserves respect, support, evidence-based information, and shared decision-making as they move through pregnancy, birth, postpartum, and parenting. While there aren’t nearly enough birth settings and providers that offer this kind of care, I am happy to know and collaborate with several hospital-based providers that provide respectful care. And I’m thrilled to be able to offer this kind of care to first-time birthing folks who desire a home birth too.
Planning to have your first baby at home in the Chicago area is an investment in your health, your family, and your wellbeing. Birth Roots will always be transparent about reasons to transfer care, as well as make contingency plans if a higher level of care is needed. But know that if home birth is where your heart is, and you have a healthy pregnancy, you might want to plan a home birth “just in case” you want respectful care that supports your physiology and centers you and your family — and where your chances of a healthy birth for you and baby might be considerably higher than in a hospital.
