Our 2019 Statistics | Tampa Bay Midwifery & Home Birth

When we opened the home birth arm of our practice in 2013 we promised to keep with our transparency pledge and publish our stats each year. A few years in to that promise the state of Florida changed to mandated reporting of stats but our year runs June-June so it makes it difficult to keep track of both! Since our last stats published in 2016 a lot has happened. We have had some babies personally, we’ve added a 3rd midwife, and we have changed the landscape of our practice with the growth of The Community Roots Collective as well as our north office in Brooksville.

We have not made good on that promise of yearly public publishing but we promise to catch up with that now that we have more of a flow. We thought it would be nice to do our calendar year of 2019 as a snap shot of our practice. Stay tuned for an update of 2016-2018!

For Jan 2019-Dec 2019 we had 57 clients who started care with us planning home births
Of those clients
+12.2% transferred to higher level care in the antepartum period (before labor began.) Reasons for a transfer during this period included pregnancy induced hypertension, polyhdramnios (too much amniotic fluid), postdates and fetal anomaly.
+31% transferred to the hospital during labor. These transfers included non reassuring fetal heart tones, desire for pain medication, unexplained frank vaginal bleeding, breech presentation, prolonged rupture of membranes, and failure to progress during 1st (active labor)or 2nd stage (pushing.) Nearly all of our in labor transfers this year were first time mothers or clients planning vaginal births after cesareans (VBAC.) 28% of our in labor transfers were also simply because of premature or prolonged rupture of membranes.
+0.57 transferred to the hospital immediately postpartum . This accounted for one person transported for hemorrhage. Mother was stable and did not require blood transfusions.
+5.2% of these births were VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean) 
+We had a 75% VBAC success rate!
+7.02% cesarean rate, with only a 5.3% PRIMARY cesarean rate.
+96% of clients were still exclusively breastfeeding at 6 weeks postpartum
No fetal, maternal, or newborn deaths. 

2019 was a tough year for births. We have seen more miscarriages, complications, and annoying things like premature rupture of membranes (PROM- read more about that here) than ever before. Many of our colleagues have reported the same thing the past few years, especially in 2019. Is it cultural? Just the luck of the draw this year? The whole world melting around us? Folks more stressed than ever before? Who knows but we know it can be disheartening for families when things don’t unfold as planned. It is for us as midwives too. In 2020 we are focusing on ways to help families mediate some of these risks. It is a hard world out there right now and as midwives we know we ‘birth as we live’ so we want to help folks live better and continue to see happy, healthy births.

Aside from the home birth side of our practice we have an easy access care option for families who desire or need a hospital delivery. Since the Barefoot Bus days to now we have worked really hard to grow this side of our care simply so more families know this option exists for them! In our opinion, this can be the best of both worlds especially for folks experiencing conditions or considerations that make home birth an unsafe option. It is also accessible, affordable, and family centered. Hour long appointments, one on one care, and in depth childbirth education helps families to have great outcomes!

We have never kept extensive track of stats for our prenatal care only clients until mid 2019 simply because only intake stats are required to be reported to the state. We are going to keep more specific data from here out though and hope to share continued expansion and improvement of this model at work here in Tampa. Here are our preliminary stats for that time period until now!

21 total clients began care specifically for prenatal and postpartum care with planned deliveries at Tampa General Hospital with the on- call nurse midwives from the USF group or resident service.

Of those 21 clients:
33% were successful VBACs!

43% of those VBACs were vaginal births after MULTIPLE cesareans (2 or more!)

Only 4% experienced preterm labor and delivery before 36 weeks.

19% cesarean rate with NO PRIMARY cesareans!

96% of all clients were still breastfeeding at their 6 week postpartum visit.

No maternal, fetal, or newborn deaths

We look forward to supporting many more families in 2020 with evidence based, compassionate care that puts birthing folks first. We can’t wait to smash the birth patriarchy with yall!