Midwives are calling for a “seismic shift” to enable more women to give birth at home after a study suggesting that home deliveries can be as safe as those in hospital.

Research covering nearly 530,000 births in the Netherlands found that women had a no greater risk of their baby dying or becoming ill if they gave birth at home rather than in hospital.

The Royal College of Midwives said that the study was a “major step forward” in showing that home births were safe for women with low risk of complications, but added that the NHS would need a fundamental reorganisation to support more home births.

The Government has promised all women in England a choice of where they would prefer to give birth by the end of this year, but experts say that a lack of community midwives could make this unrealistic in many areas. According to the RCM Royal College of Midwives an extra 5,000 full-time midwives are needed urgently to fulfil this and other pledges on maternity, but ministers have promised only to recruit an extra 3,400 full-time midwives by 2012.

Louise Silverton, the deputy general secretary of the college, said that “to begin providing more home births there has to be a seismic shift in the way maternity services are organised.

“The NHS is simply not set up to meet the potential demand for home births, because we are still in a culture where the vast majority of births are in hospital. There also has to be a major increase in the number of midwives because they are the people who will be in the homes delivering the babies.”

Celebrity mothers including Davina McCall and Charlotte Church are credited with making home births more popular, but less than 3 per cent of all births in England and Wales took place at home in 2006, the latest figures show.

This compares with nearly one in three (30 per cent) of all births taking place at home in Holland.

Standing up early in labour 'speeds birth'

Lying down during the early stages of childbirth may prolong the agony of labour, a review of medical evidence by the Cochrane Collaboration suggests. Researchers found that the first stage of labour was significantly shorter for women who kneel, stand up, walk around or sit upright.

The review by the Cochrane Collaboration, the organisation that promotes evidence-based medicine, used data from 21 studies involving 3,706 women in developed countries since the 1960s. The first stage of labour was about an hour shorter in those who adopted upright positions compared to those who lay down, the researchers said.

Annemarie Lawrence, of the Institute of Women’s and Children’s Health at the Townsville Hospital in Queensland, Australia, commented: “In most developing countries, women stand up or walk around as they wish during the early stages of birth with no ill effects. Based on these results, we would recommend that women are encouraged to use whichever positions they find most comfortable, but are specifically advised to avoid lying flat.”

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