Estimates
of the numbers
of women booked for home birth but delivering in hospital were even more difficult to obtain because hospital records do not always specify this information accurately and no national estimate exists.1 4 Data collected in this region in 1983 suggested that 35 %
of these women changed to hospital based care either before or
during labour, and a more detailed prospective study
of all planned home births in 1993 found a total transfer rate
of 43 %.8 Women were classified as having booked for a home birth
when a community midwife had accepted a woman for home delivery and had this arrangement accepted by her manager and supervisor
of midwives at any
stage in
pregnancy, irrespective
of any
later change
of plan.