Once women turned to their mothers for advice when their newborn babies cried incessantly at 3am. But cutbacks in NHS midwifery services and the growing number of highly paid career women giving birth later in life are changing the face of natal care.

Middle-class mothers are paying between £125 and £200 a day for a maternity nurse to teach them to breast-feed and manage the baby’s sleep and diet. One London agency had a threefold increase in maternity nurse bookings, from 125 in 2005 to 386 in 2006.

A study of 1,500 parents by Tinies, a nanny agency, found that the main reason for the rising popularity of maternity nurses was a lack of post-natal support from the NHS or overworked husbands. Six out of ten parents said that poor post-natal care by midwives and hospitals was the main reason for hiring a nurse. Sixty-nine per cent said that fathers got up at night fewer than ten times in the baby’s first six weeks.

Sam Jones, 38, a maternity nurse, said that in the past decade there had been a sharp rise in demand for her services.

“Some mums are like Earth Mothers, but others are very nervous, especially if the dads are busy,” she said. “I’m there to help the baby and give the parents a good start. It can be help with a routine, giving the mother more opportunities to sleep, advice on breast-feeding and how to care for the baby.”

There are about a dozen childcare agencies in England offering dedicated maternity services to new mothers.

Oliver Black, Tinies director, said that although the agency had offered the service for 25 years demand was now at a record high, with three quarters of clients being working parents. “There is no doubt that the midwife staffing crisis means that many new mothers and babies are not getting the help they need,” he said.

While the number of births rose from 563,744 in 2001 to 613,029 last year, the number of midwives dropped. In 2005 there were 24,808 midwives, 36 fewer than the previous year.

Vanessa Willimotts, of Eden Childcare, said that more midwives were applying to become maternity nurses. Most were disillusioned and depressed that they could no longer offer the standard of service that they had been trained to give.

Melanie Every, a regional manager of the Royal College of Midwives, said that cuts to the maternity services budget were not the reason for the rise in maternity nurses. It was mainly because more career women were having children later, were richer and found it tougher adapting to the “lifestyle shock” of motherhood.

— Children who spend a lot of time in nursery are more likely to be aggressive and disobedient throughout primary school, according to a study published today. It will provide ammunition to those who feel working women damage their children’s health by putting them into nurseries too young. The findings, from a continuing study of 1,400 children by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in America, will be published in the Easter edition of the journal Child Development.

Midwife cuts

— Trusts are cutting budgets for midwifery training, in some cases by 75 per cent or completely

— Many midwifery units now depend on charitable donations to fund training

— Two thirds of midwifery managers say that their department is understaffed

— Thirty-eight per cent say that they have suffered budget cuts

— Twenty-seven per cent say that their Primary Care Trusts froze recruitment in 2005-06. A fifth say the freeze has not been lifted

— There were 24,808 midwives in NHS England, in 2005

— Since 2001, the annual number of births has risen by 49,285 to 613,029

— The average age for a woman to give birth is 30

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