We see one primary midwife through our entire pregnancy, for monthly appointments of up to, or more than, an hour. Some midwives visit our homes each month, some will alternate between their office (often in their homes) and ours. She is our main carer through labour. Our midwife will visit a number of times in the weeks after the birth of a baby as well to monitor our wellbeing and that of our babies. She will also be on call through this time. Many women also like to have a doula or birth attendant as well. Some women choose to only have family members present at their birth.

We choose a model of care which asserts pregnancy and birth are normal physiological states not medical emergencies. Your midwife should promote and maintain an evidence-based practice. Regardless of the model of care you choose, remember to always remain a consumer and advocate for yourself and your baby.

Planning a vaginal birth after previous surgery is fraught with stress and difficulty in hospitals. Because homebirth midwives provide evidence based care, birth after caesarean is viewed no differently from any other birth. Our birthing potential is in no way diminished by previous caesareans and many women birth beautifully at home even after several surgeries.

High routine intervention rates in hospitals and birth centres have made birth potentially dangerous and traumatic for women and babies. Spontaneous, normal, physiological birth is the safest way for babies to be born.

We want to have complete control over the environment in which we birth without having to negotiate with strangers who have timetables and ideas about birth that don't match our own.

We choose to be active and proactive in how we labour and birth and learn as much as we can. We take the power of knowledge with us into birth instead of giving others responsibility for our care, choices and outcomes.

Natural birth is important to us and we see how difficult it is to achieve normal physiological birth in a medicalised setting. Midwives carry medical equipment the same as most birth centres but it is rarely required in an unhindered birth.

We choose to remove ourselves from the medical system which may have traumatised us and our babies at previous births or choose to avoid trauma with our first baby.

We believe that our maternity hospital system is in crisis partly because of an unhealthy emphasis on birth as a medical event and that the funds spent on unnecessary interventions and obstetricians would be better placed giving women access to midwifery care.

We choose to have the most personal, intimate moments of our lives take place in our homes where our children are conceived and surrounded by people we know, trust and love. This might also be very important to us if our children were conceived via methods like IVF which can be impersonal. We want to be the first person to hold our babies and have them on our bare skin from birth without any interruption.

we choose a midwife who is part of our local community network and who will sometimes continue to be an important and cherished part of our families after the birth of our children.

We want our memories of birth to be of hard work with passion and accomplishment. We remember how we first met our babies for the rest of our lives so we owe it to us, and them, for that to be on our terms and as beautiful as we can make it.

We may want to have our children at the births of their siblings thus including them in the ordinary miracle of birth. This is a loving gift which will stay with them the rest of their lives.

Women who birth at home have greater support and better experiences with breastfeeding. We also establish breastfeeding from birth as our babies are not taken away from us and the hours after birth are crucial in this process.

We want our babies to enter the world gently, without harsh lights, unnecessary intrusive procedures and strangers. Our relationship with our children gets off to the best possible start when the natural processes of labour and birth are unhindered. Babies are designed to birth, they are not designed to cope with unnecessary drugs and surgery.