Mothers opting for a new line of delivery in the labour revolution;

As Belinda Jobst latches her newborn daughter to her breast, midwife Alison Ewing presses gently around her abdomen to check that her uterus is contracting normally.

The routine post-natal check suggests nothing out of the ordinary. But what makes this meeting between midwife and new mother different from the norm is the close relationship the pair have built up since before baby Natasha was born at home a fortnight ago.

For while most women - whether they are seeking a home or hospital birth - see a different midwife at each check-up, Jobst paid several hundred pounds to go private. In return, she has received one-to-one care before, during and after her baby's birth.

It was a decision she made despite the fact that her midwife, one of only two working independently in Scotland, is not even covered by insurance. Yet it is an option being taken up by more and more women, determined to take control of their birth experience. Last year alone, Scotland's other independent midwife, Edinburgh-based Deborah Purdue had to turn down seven requests for private care from women in Glasgow.

What makes Jobst's decision more notable is that the mother of three boys is herself a qualified midwife. Ewing's normal fee of #1400 - which would easily buy a year's worth of baby clothes and equipment - might seem an inordinate expense for a service provided free by the NHS, but it was a sacrifice Jobst was more than happy to make.

"I wanted to have my baby delivered by somebody I knew and trusted and who I felt understood my view of childbirth and was happy to go along with that," said Jobst, who lives in Glasgow's west end. The 43- year-old yoga teacher knew her wish to have her baby at home would not go down well with the medical profession given her age and the fact that she has already had three children - the last two born at home. Although she was more than prepared to go into hospital if the need arose, she was less than happy with the way her youngest son's birth in a Glasgow hospital was handled and did not want to repeat the experience. "When you know your midwife you are more relaxed, it makes the whole experience less fearful," she said.

For women seeking a home birth, the private sector is becoming an attractive alternative to the NHS, whose policy it is to actively discourage home births - resulting in a home birth rate of 1% in Scotland and 2% across the whole of the UK. Despite the 1993 introduction of a government bill called Changing Childbirth, designed to give women more say in deciding what kind of care they should receive in pregnancy, labour and delivery, NHS insiders say few hospitals have made any of the improvements recommended in the paper.

Although going private is expensive - it can cost up to #2,500 to have a midwife at your beck and call for two weeks on either side of your due date - it offers pregnant women peace of mind that at least their birth wishes will be respected. Such is the demand to give birth away from hospital that earlier this year The Glasgow Home Birth/Natural Birth Support Group was founded to offer support to women considering this as an option.

Organiser Denise McDonough said: "I think most women instinctively feel they want to know their midwife before they go into labour, but unfortunately this rarely happens in today's hospital environment. At home women know they're more likely to have the kind of birth they want without having to fight every step of the way, whereas in hospital there's the feeling you have to go along with routines."

Ewing agrees. For her, Jobst's birth - her first since registering independently - was a chance to put into practice all the ideals she holds about ante- and post-natal care and birth itself. She is one of a growing number of midwives disillusioned by the rigid bureaucracy of the NHS maternity services.

"As a woman, with two young children of my own, I know how important it is to feel a bond with the person who is going to deliver your baby," she said.

"In a typical hospital setting, there are lots of policies and protocols, many of which are unnecessary and don't do women any favours. Even if you are having a home birth where you are under the wing of a community midwife team, there is no such thing as continuity of care. Chances are you will get a midwife who you have never met and doesn't know your body, which makes intervention during labour much more likely."

All too often, Ewing claims, women just hand their pregnancy over to the professionals, which not only disempowers women but is also very disheartening to midwives.

"Don't get me wrong - many midwives who have been working for a long time are able to build up a rapport with a woman at short notice, but there are some things you just cannot know about a person's body on meeting them for the first time," she added.

Being independent allows Ewing to work in ways which would see her facing the sack in a hospital environment. For instance, she can let her clients eat during labour to keep up their strength.

"Some consultants claim undigested food can cause problems in the event of a general anaesthetic, say to carry out an emergency C- Section, but this has not been proved by research," she said.

Glasgow, in particular, she singles out for criticism in the way it treats home birth requests. Cases abound of women being warned it could take two hours to reach their nearest hospital in an emergency, midwives being unwilling to park their cars in certain parts of the city and horror stories of post-partum haemorrhage disasters, with the oft-added remark, "And how would you feel if anything happened to your baby?"

In fact, these worries are not borne out by statistics. The government's 1994 report; Home Births, concluded that contrary to the expectations of co-author and obstetrician Geoffrey Chamberlain, home births lead to fewer complications than those in hospital.

Jobst, who until March worked at London's Chelsea and Westminster Hospital as a bank midwife, says: "There is a very strong attitude against home births in the west of Scotland, but we are seeing a resurgence in parts of England. In some parts of the country the figure is around 12% and Brighton had a home birth rate of 12-14% the last time I looked."

As for why she one of only two midwives in Scotland practising independently, Ewing says many of her colleagues are unwilling to work without insurance which, since 1994, has been prohibitively expensive - between #8000 and #15,000 a year. As a result, most independent midwives are not insured and clients must sign a contract stating that they accept their services without insurance cover. Current midwifery education is also blamed for not preparing midwives for home births.

Ewing, who completed her training south of the Border, said: "If all you see every day are the high-risk, high interventionist births - the obstetric disasters - then your view of childbirth can become very coloured. Doctors, by the very nature of their work, never see the normal births.

"I was lucky - I attended a wonderful home birth when I was a student midwife but most don't have that experience by the time they graduate."

Patricia Purton, director of the Royal College of Midwives' Scottish Board, agrees that lack of training and experience - on the part of GPs as well as midwives - is partly to blame for their reluctance to agree to home births.

She said: "You have to remember that when childbirth entered the domain of hospitals in the 1970s, it became a patriarchal system where women were told what they were and weren't allowed to do. However, you have to remember that many hospital policies exist not to deliberately obstruct the perinatal care of women but to support the professionals' course of action if something goes wrong."

Jobst added: "I was excited rather than apprehensive about giving birth this time round because I felt safe with someone I knew. In the event Natasha came quite quickly and Alison only just made it in time after just an hour of labour in a warm bath. It was a wonderful experience.

"Despite the fact it cost us such a large sum of money to go private I feel we made the right decision."

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