Austrian midwife arrested after baby dies during home birth

Zagreb police have arrested a 69-year-old Austrian midwife after a home birth ended in tragedy. 

She was helping a 42-year-old woman deliver twins two nights ago when one of the babies died. The surviving twin is in hospital. Doctors say both the child and the mother are stable.

“They arrived on Friday morning around 6 am. They were brought in by ambulance. The woman was bleeding heavily due to a retained placenta. She was immediately taken to the operating room. The live baby was immediately admitted to our neonatal unit,” said Dr. Trpimir Goluža, a gynecology and obstetrics specialist at Zagreb’s Clinical Hospital Center.

The midwife is still in custody, accused of negligence causing death.

The case highlights legal uncertainty around home births in Croatia, where they are not banned, but remain unregulated.

"As far as we know, this was a planned home-birth. This is a gray area because we don't have data on home births. We usually learn about them when there is a complication and the mother winds up in our care,” said Goluža.

"The only truly safe place to give birth is at a specialized hospital, which has the equipment to monitor the state of the baby and mother during the entire process. There, we can respond quickly and complete the birth by surgery if necessary,” said Goluža.

When something goes wrong in during a home birth, responsibility belongs exclusively to the family that made the decision and the midwife who participated in the entire process, according to Maja Rečić, the executive director of the Croatian Association for the Promotion of Midwifery. She also adds that midwives working in maternity wards are not allowed to assist in home births, unless it is an emergency.

“If we were to draft guidelines in Croatia, they would certainly go in the direction determining which women can give birth at home. Even then, a twin pregnancy would not be an option for home birth because it is a higher risk and as such must performed under controlled conditions at a hospital,” said Rečić.