Fully seconding Kirsten's comment here. If you're going to make statements like that, you're going to have to back them up, Tom! FWIW, my third daughter was a planned homebirth who still managed to be a BBA - she showed up ten minutes before the midwives got there! It was a very straightforward homebirth, no complications other than being bloody quick! My first two births had also been very straightforward and fast, which was precisely why I'd wanted a homebirth. However I had to fight tooth and nail to get it, and thanks to people like you parroting misinformation that homebirths are risky, other women will have a hard time getting their homebirths too. A planned homebirth is a damned sight safer than a hospital birth. Normally you're very well informed and informative, Tom, so it's very dissappointing to see you get this one wrong. And I'm very sad the mother was not given an opportunity for a physiological third stage but was instead injected with syntocinon. I hope that mother presses charges of assault against the midwife, because that was what it was. At the very least I hope the family send a written complaint to the Head of Midwifery.