Why home birth

A small but vocal group of women are turning their backs on hospitals and heading home—to birth their babies. Both home birth advocates and hospital supporters say that America’s system of childbirth is broken, and yet thousands of healthy babies are born in the United States each day.

Inside Home Birth is the work of multimedia journalists Mathilde Piard and Michelle Stockman. We decided to take a look at women who are so disillusioned with standard American birth practices that they choose to birth at home, and the current trends that might influence that decision.

Over five months we conducted interviews with over 100 sources, speaking with midwives, doulas, obstetricians and child birth educators. We were invited into the homes of parents who decided to have home births and followed them as their decision played out in real time.

The final product became our Master’s Project for the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism 2007-2008.

About us

Mathilde Piard is a new media student at Columbia. She has worked as an intern at the Agence France Press, BBC News Interactive, and for several non-profits oriented to the international community. She has accepted a 10-week Dow Jones Newspaper Fund online editing internship at the Palm Beach Post in Florida for the summer of 2008 after graduating in May.

Michelle Stockman is a new media and radio student at Columbia. She worked as a technical trainer and MBA admissions consultant before embarking on her journalism career. She has accepted a 10-week internship with the Hindustan Times in India for the summer of 2008. As a part-time student at Columbia, she plans to return to New York City and graduate in 2009.

Thank you

We would like to express our great appreciation to everyone who contributed to this project. We thank you for sharing your homes, your offices, and your opinions with us as we researched and documented the experience of home birth in New York City. We wish you all the best and hope to continue our dialogue about childbirth with you. Please feel free to contact us at info /at/ insidehomebirth /dot/ com with your opinions, arguments, and thoughts about our site.

We would like to especially thank our advisers, Sree Sreenivasan, Russell Chun and Michael Cervieri, as well as Beth Whitehouse of Newsday and Duy Linh Tu of Resolution Seven for their input and guidance.

Home page photo by Lam Thuy Vo.