Many women find that the privacy and security of their own home provides the ideal supportive, comfortable, safe environment for them to birth in.  This does help to reduce stress hormones which inhibit the labour and increase the "normal" hormones conducive to a good labour and birth experience.

Other women homebirth because they believe in their body's ability to birth, wish to involve their partner and other children, or prefer to reduce the chance of intervention in their labour.

Women choose homebirth to:

• Experience fewer complications in labour
• Reduce the need for interventions
• Use less pain medication as women work with their labour using various methods such as immersion in water, shower, massage and walking
• Lower their chances of a caesarean
• Remain in comfortable and familiar surroundings
• Avoid time limits being imposed on labour and birth
• Antenatal and postnatal consultations at home feel much more personal than visiting an antenatal clinic with many other women and babies present.
  
• Have continuity of care and carer
• Have choice and control over their experience
• Receive gold standard care
• Lower their chance of having postnatal depression
• Improve their breastfeeding experience
• Give their baby a gentle birth
• Be seen as a person, not a number in a busy and stretched system
• Avoid birthing on the side of the road, unassisted
• Access evidence-based care that supports the birthing woman's physiology
• Experience waterbirth

Many women ask about my birthing statistics; they are listed below:

Normal birth (no forceps, vacuum or caesarean): 89%

Caesarean 5%

Vacuum 5%

Forceps 0%

Episiotomy 0%

Intact perineum (no tears) 69%; 71% women have no stitches at all after their baby is born

81% women labour without medical forms of pain relief and only 3% women use an epidural for labour

92% women having their first babies have a normal birth

My VBAC rate is 88%

6% women are induced

My statistics are for the births I have attended as primary care provider, both at home, in birth centres and in hospitals.

What can we expect to pay for midwifery care?

Please refer to this page.