ABSTRACT
For each woman and her baby the birth is a momentous, once-off life event. In Western societies, where there is greater variety of practices, a woman’s personal choices of birth venue and attendants are crucial in ensuring a good fit between her expectations and the actual experience. The main criteria in the choice of a birth place is whether a woman feels accepted and secure, and trusts her baby will be safely delivered and cared for. In recent years, mothers and midwives alike have become involved in a campaign to reinstate female care, individual choice, and safe homebirths, and particularly to acknowledge the primacy of emotional needs. To the Facilitator, labour is an exciting, powerful process to which she and the baby must surrender in order to be reunited. Birth hails a new journey for baby and parents: from psychic into external reality. Birth is the end of one journey and the beginning of another.
