Loading Only 14 hospitals offer home birthing nationally. Currently, women in Sydney who want a home birth and who do not go through the Royal's program, need to pay $3500 to $6000 for a private midwife. Ms Kapur's husband, Paul Keogh, had encouraged her to explore the option, and so she researched the risks and benefits of home birthing. The comfort, privacy, level of autonomy over her body and the absence of interventions that home birthing offered appealed to her. "Birthing is a process you can't control, but I wanted to do everything I could to have that experience," she said. She gave birth to her daughter Ishani in a birthing pool in the lounge room of their Coogee apartment.

"She was so peaceful," Ms Kapur said. "We allowed her to float up and take her first breath ... It was a beautiful moment." The birth was everything she had hoped for. Amrita Kapur holding Ishani after giving birth. Credit:Amrita Kapur "I definitely went through phases of great intensity and fear where I definitely thought I couldn't do it ... but I had my husband and my very close friend who looked at me with so much love, telling me 'You are doing it,' " she said. After breastfeeding Ishani, and on the advice of her midwife, Ms Kapur was transferred to the Royal by paramedics who had been notified that she was home birthing that day.

She had lost marginally more blood than expected and was transferred for observation as a precaution. "I said, 'Yes that makes sense, let's go,' " Ms Kapur said. Amrita Kapur is supported by her husband Paul Keogh at their Coogee home moments after she gave birth to Ishani. Credit:Amrita Kapur "It would have been great to have been able to stay in our little bubble at home, but the measure of a good home birth with a public hospital is not that every home birth is textbook but that every home birth is managed in a respectful and sensitive way in a well-functioning system." The service is available to women who are assessed as being at very low risk, and are expected to have a normal, straightforward vaginal birth without pain-relief drugs.

Ten women have had home births with the service since it began in July. Five were first-time mothers. Another 22 women have booked their home births up to June. The home births are managed in accordance with the public hospital's guidelines and NSW Health policy. Amrita Kapur and Paul Keogh with their baby girl Ishani. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer Three women who were hoping for a home birth delivered their babies in hospital because they no longer met the low-risk criteria. No woman has been transferred from home to hospital in labour. Women who plan for a home birth but go into labour before 37 weeks or who have not gone into labour seven to 10 days after their due date will need to give birth in hospital.

The midwives provide perinatal care at home for up to two weeks after the births. Helen McCarthy, director of Nursing and Midwifery Services at the Royal said the feedback from women who used the service had been "outstanding". "It is wonderful to be able to offer women genuine choice about where they have their baby," said Ms McCarthy, who has extensive experience of home-birthing services in Britain. "It's important to them to feel that confidence in themselves and their bodies. "For a lot of women, hospital is the place they feel most comfortable and it's absolutely right that is the place they give birth," Ms McCarthy said.

Loading Roughly 0.3 per cent of births in Australia are planned home births, compared with 2-3 per cent in Britain and 3-5 per cent in New Zealand. High quality research comparing the outcomes of hospital and home births in Australia is limited, due to the small numbers choosing the latter. In a study of 16,840 planned home births in England, 21 per cent were transferred to hospital. A Dutch study of 168,618 low-risk women attempting a home birth found 32 per cent were transferred to hospital. The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists backs hospitals as the safest place to give birth in Australia and New Zealand.

"A decision to give birth at home must be taken in the knowledge that there are relatively few resources available for the management of sudden unexpected complications and that these complications may affect any pregnancy or birth," the college's positions statement reads. But the college said the small group of women who opted for home births should be "maximally supported in that choice". Midwife and home-birth mentor Sheryl Sidery is training the hospital's team of midwives in home-birth deliveries to build the workforce and ease the on-call pressure for staff. "Women in [Sydney's] eastern suburbs have been asking for this for a long time," she said. "Giving birth is quite a private thing. Women are very vulnerable and they need to give birth where they feel most safe and trust their bodies and their caregivers.