to the hospital doesn't guarantee that birth will be hands on and traumatic. The midwife-led Spires unit is brilliant. I have had two births at the hospital and there wasn't a doctor in sight (except when I got an epidural with my first!). It is very, very supportive of midwife care. I actually wanted a hands-on medicalised birth and definitely didn't get it! With my second I barely even got gas and air... I am not sure how the reform of the NHS is going to affect homebirths in the UK though since apparently independent midwifes will no longer be permitted. Yes, I think in the UK there has been a pretty big commitment for birth to be "supervised" (can't think of a better term) by midwives rather than doctors. Maybe having a tax-payer funded health system has helped with this -- midwives and less interventionist births are cheaper. I agree wholeheartedly with this point -- and I will add that I had both my children in the hospital -- but I do want to nitpick with the opposition of homebirth and science/medicine; the scientific/medical evidence on the advantages of hospital vs. home is at the very least not so clear that only an unscientific-minded person would choose home. There's a stereotype at play there that I think is the opposite of useful, and in my personal experience of women I know who choose homebirth, absolutely not true. Yes and I feel like it is at odds with the general