It's a scary time to have a baby in a hospital. Home births need to be more accessible to pregnant women.

• Giving birth at a hospital amid a pandemic means a new mother, her partner, and baby could be at risk of developing the coronavirus.
• Many laboring women may also have to go through the process alone, since some hospitals have banned support people or limit the amount of time they can spend there.
• Journalist Allison Yarrow argues that the pandemic is an opportune moment for women to consider giving birth at home, where they might feel safer and more in control of the experience.
• Yarrow is writing a book about how about how misogyny shapes the transition to motherhood.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

When I tell people that I gave birth to my third baby at home, they often ask whether or not it was on purpose. It was planned and it was magical, a life highlight. Going deep within myself to welcome my son in the low-lit room where I still sleep, beside people I trust and who believed in my power to give birth, was a revelation.

Afterward, my husband and I celebrated with our two older kids, all propped on our own pillows, feasting on tomatoes, eggs, and coffee prepared by my midwife, doula, and a friend.

I'm even more grateful for that day now. The coronavirus epidemic has upended all of our lives, but birthing people are distinctively vulnerable. They have already been preparing for one of life's great shifts and weren't counting on that coinciding with a global pandemic.

Hospitals, which account for about 99% of the US' near 4 million annual births, have become war zones in the battle against COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. That's why scores of pregnant women in the US are reconsidering where to give birth.

For years, social mores have warned against giving birth at home. Conventional wisdom says that home births are dangerous and hospital births are safe.

Hospitals are equipped with life-saving technologies, including medication, surgery, and NICUs, while a home does not. But, at home, a mother can exercise more control over the experience and the birth can unfold naturally, without the common medical interventions that can put a woman's health and wellbeing at risk.

The coronavirus pandemic offers the opportunity to reevaluate our preconceptions about where birth belongs and what it could be like.

At a hospital, a mother, her partner, and baby are at risk for contracting the coronavirus

In hospitals now, the whole family unit risks exposure to COVID-19.

On top of that, many mothers are going through childbirth without a support person, since some hospitals have banned partners from joining women in the delivery room. Some have allowed partners to attend labor and birth, but send them away afterward.

New mothers may also risk having their newborns removed from them, depriving both mom and baby of critical skin-to-skin contact.

Even prior to the pandemic, some hospitals would whisk babies away from moms immediately after birth — despite recommendations against this practice, and it's happening more now, since women who test positive for the coronavirus may be separated from their newborns.

The initial skin-to-skin experience is crucial for both mother and baby for numerous reasons. It calms them both, regulates baby's heart rate and breathing, initiates strong maternal instincts, and encourages breast milk production, which is particularly critical during a pandemic.

Researchers are studying whether human milk contains antibodies to protect against, or even treat, COVID-19.

At home, it's unlikely that a mother and her baby would be separated

Barring no major health issues, mom and baby would remain together at home after birth.

"The only reason ever to separate them is if mom is critically ill or if baby is too sick to be in her arms, and needs to be in the NICU," Dr. Aviva Romm, a physician and midwife, told Insider.

Even without a pandemic, there's also mounting proof that birthing in a hospital can be hazardous for healthy, low-risk women.

The US has the highest maternal mortality rate of any developed country

Our maternal mortality rate is the highest in the developed world. Women giving birth today are statistically twice as likely to die during childbirth than their mothers were. Black women are three times more likely to die than white women; institutional racism is widely suspected to be a culprit.

Laboring women are not sick, yet they become patients once they walk through the double doors.

This is especially true for women who don't go into natural labor by a precise deadline deemed by doctors.

Some doctors argue that it's necessary to induce every pregnant person at 39 weeks, because doing so could prevent stillbirth (though the risk of this is typically very low). But due dates are often just rough estimates and only 5% of women give birth on that day.

Dr. Joshua Copel, professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences, and pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine, said most pregnant people give birth between 37 and 42 weeks, but doctors typically won't allow a woman to go beyond 42 weeks without interventions.

According to the midwifery model, women with normal pregnancies can actually safely wait until their bodies go into labor on their own. But OBGYNs

Some doctors are quick to push inductions, which can lead to C-sections

An induction, which initiates labor artificially with medication, disturbs a natural process. This is why inductions often lead to what's known as the "cascade of interventions" which can result in a C-section. Cesarean section is the most common surgery performed in America, accounting for one-third of all births. There's no question that it can be life-saving, but it is overused in the US, and comes with serious risks.

A recent study found that C-section deliveries were 80% more likely to include complications than vaginal births. The risks, which increase with each subsequent delivery, include infection, blood clots, hemorrhage, organ damage, and even death.

C-sections come with a host of risks, including incontinence and organ prolapse

Major abdominal surgery is more difficult to recover from than vaginal birth, and can also lead to postpartum complications like incontinence, organ prolapse, scar pain or infection, breastfeeding difficulty, and perinatal mood disorders. Caring for a newborn is demanding; adding surgery recovery to that task can make it harder.

In hospitals, all laboring women are subjected to restrictions — but it's not always clear whether or not they are necessary. They're barred from eating, drinking, and moving, and must receive permission to push. Much of this protocol isn't even supported by the latest evidence. It begs the question why women's decision-making in such matters is stunted to begin with.

Negative experiences at hospitals can lead new mothers to develop postpartum PTSD

Hospital birth has also resulted in a mental health crisis among some new mothers.

Up to 45% of women described their births as traumatic, and about 9% suffer postpartum PTSD, according to a study authored by Cheryl Beck, a professor of nursing at the University of Connecticut.

Beck, who has studied birth trauma for two decades, found that new mothers can develop mental health disorders as a result of negative experiences in a hospital. She said this can occur when women feel stripped of their dignity, or are kept in the dark about what happens to their bodies during birth.

I surveyed more than 1,300 women about their childbirths for a book I'm writing about how misogyny shapes the transition to motherhood, and about 40% of them confirmed Beck's findings.

Beck says first-time moms are more at risk for traumatic birth than folks who have done it before, likely because of the feeling of losing control, and of the unknown. Those fears inspired me to choose hospital birth twice.

The first time, in 2015, I had a precipitous labor and nearly gave birth in the Uber. About two hours after my water broke, I was holding my daughter. As I've written before, I didn't have time to adjust the idea of her leaving my body.

When I had my son in 2017, labor was much slower, and there was more opportunity to be futzed with by (well-meaning!) nurses who came by to attach a fetal heart rate monitor to my belly, or put a port in my arm, acts that were framed as commandments, not choices. Those interventions weren't part of my birth plan and not part of a normal labor at home.

My home birth was so much more peaceful and empowering than my two hospital births

At home, last August, when I gave birth to my third baby, everything was different. I was the center of my own care team—the expert in the room. My midwife waited quietly while I labored, my doula applied heat to my aching back. I chose the place and position I labored in. I pushed when I felt the urge overtake my body, not on command. There was no checking, prodding, manipulating. My son's birth was intense—comes with the territory—but also peaceful, undisturbed.

Of course, home birth is not for everyone. High-risk people should labor with the full force of modern technology. Factors like preeclampsia, high blood pressure, and clotting disorders disqualify homebirth candidates.

But for low-risk and healthy people, homebirth might be more comfortable, supported, and safe, especially during a global pandemic.

To make safe homebirth accessible immediately, we must lift the present obstacles. More than 30 states allow certified professional midwives, who are the homebirth experts, to practice.

States that don't because of complicated licensing (looking at you, New York) should immediately lift de facto bans on credentialed professionals, allowing more people to welcome babies safely at home.

Insurers must cover home birth (mine cost more out of pocket than both of my hospital births combined).

Lastly, the hospital birth system has historically discouraged cooperation and partnership between obstetricians and midwives who attend home births, but this must end. Now more than ever, birth attendants of all kinds— midwives, doulas, nurses, doctors, anesthesiologists, and more, must collaborate, to care for birthing people, no matter who they are or where their babies are born.

Home was humanity's first birth space, and it is common and safe across the world today. People who are pregnant can labor and give birth without major surgery, harsh lights, spinal injections, bleating machines, and probing hands. Hormones, the brain, and the body know what to do, and they do it extremely well.

This was true before COVID-19, and it will remain so when this plague is over. The disease has given us a chance to remember that.

• Read more:
• A woman with the coronavirus gave birth while in a coma. She met her newborn when she woke up 11 days later.
• I'm 38 weeks pregnant and I have to give birth alone. If my husband could get tested for the coronavirus, it wouldn't have to be that way.
• A New York City mom gave birth in a hospital without her partner because of coronavirus restrictions. Here's what it was like.
• A 5-year-old Michigan girl died from the coronavirus, but deaths in young children from the disease are still rare