Home birth has been in the news recently and after delivering many babies at home in my career as a midwife,I was interested in this article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22888411. This large Dutch home birth study showed the benefits and safety of home birth for women, who had had previous births. The study identified that women should be attended by well trained midwives, be near a 24 hour consultant maternity unit and emergency transport be available day and night.

I suspect that only when we have more midwifery posts will this happen in the UK. This would enable all pregnant women to have another choice to where their baby would be born. At the moment home births in the UK are 2.4% of planned births, in comparison to 20% of all births in the Netherlands.

I then remembered the story my mother told me about my home birth, which was just after the war. I was her third child and it must have been a warm July morning, as my father, aunt and uncle sat on a bench in the garden. My mother knowing the bench was under the bedroom window, said she was scared to even make a noise!  My father enjoyed betting on horses, so some money went on a horse called the ‘Child of Dawn’. Of course the horse came in first!  www.motherlylove.co.uk