Welcome to the Chichester home birth website

Home birth – what does that conjure up for you?

• Is it a relaxed environment and minimal interference in the natural process of birth, or pain relief out of the dark ages and the scary prospect of needing help that isn’t there?
• Do you think of birth as a normal life experience that occasionally throws up a problem, or as a potential medical emergency zone?

For some professionals and some parents, home birth is filled with risk and uncertainty. For others it’s an obvious choice – why would anyone want to go to hospital when they are not ill? And in between are all those who simply feel uncertain. Like hospital birth, home birth has risks and benefits; it’s not for everyone. Some births need the special facilities of a hospital, but research shows definitively that for most women it is as safe to give birth at home as it is in hospital.

So it’s about feeling comfortable and secure, whatever you choose.

Chichester home birth is a small group of women who believe that birth is important and who, on a voluntary basis, work to support choice by providing affordable conferences with well known and respected speakers.

Find Out About Home Birth (FOAHB) meetings:
From time to time we arrange an informal evening so that those who are thinking about home birth and want to find out more can chat to a midwife and to parents who have chosen to have a home birth. The parents who share their experiences have usually been to one of our home birth meetings before their baby was born, so they know the routine and we know any special circumstances about their birth. We try to match them to those who come to find out about home birth. So if a couple were worried about a transfer we'd invite someone who did transfer to share their experience, or if it were a second timer or someone who'd had a previous caesarean, for example, we'd try to match this.

We organise a convenient date and place and pass the word around. We keep the home birth meetings small and by invitation only, so that people feel confident enough to ask what they really want to know.

Usually there are two or three couples and a member of Chichester HomeBirth acts as hostess. There's no charge. If you would like an invitation to the next evening please email us at info@chichesterhomebirth.org.uk.