Home Birth in Mississippi
Mississippi’s Rich History
Mississippi has a rich history of midwives and midwife attended homebirths. According to the book Mississippi Women: Their Histories, Their Lives, "As late as 1947, 58% of Mississippi babies were born at home."
In 1921, Laurie Jean Reid, a nurse with the United States Public Health Service came to Mississippi to survey the midwives of the state. Reid traveled around the 82 counties of Mississippi and identified over 4,000 midwives. An additional 1,000 midwives were identified a few years later.
Home Birth is on the Rise
The CDC reports that after a decline from 1990 to 2004, the percentage of U.S. births that occurred at home increased by 29%, from 0.56% of births in 2004 to 0.72% in 2009.
Download the full report here.
Due to the 2020, COVID-19 Pandemic there has additionally been an increase in women seeking home births as a safe birthing options for their births in Mississippi and nationwide.
Read more here.
Much like the rest of the United States, we have two types of midwives working in our state — nurse midwives and direct entry midwives.
Better Birth Mississippi is focused primarily on direct entry midwifery.
Though, we are supportive of both types of midwives and wish to see an increase in midwifery practice.
More and more women in Mississippi are choosing home births and they are being cared for by unregulated direct entry midwives (DEMs) and certified professional midwives (CPMs) practicing in Mississippi or neighboring states.
“Direct entry” simply means NOT a nurse midwife. Generally, the midwife is the primary care provider throughout pregnancy, labor, birth and postpartum care. Mississippi law states that midwives are “exempt” from medical practice laws. (see Mississippi Code excerpt below)
Under current law, any one in Mississippi can claim to be a midwife and practice midwifery. Mississippi has midwives practicing in all regions of our state and their experience, education and expertise varies greatly. Because of the lack of public protection policy, midwives who lost their right to practice midwifery in other states are free to come to our state to provide prenatal and maternal services. There has been and continues to be a lobbying effort to drastically restrict midwifery in MS.
Certified Nurse Midwives (CNMs) are Registered Nurses who have continued their education to specialize in nurse midwifery. The vast majority of CNMs have no training or experience attending out of hospital birth. We have several CNMs in the state.They work closely with Obstetricians, deliver babies in hospitals and required to work under a physician in MS. In many other states, CNMs have more autonomy from physicians and are able to care for women planning a home birth. Better Birth MS agrees that MS families could benefit from improving regulations for CNMs. However, this is not our primary focus.