'I gave birth in my living room, had a shower then went to bed - it was beautiful'

Giving birth to her first child at the hospital was never on the cards for Naomi. A trained doula, she already knew how to conduct a home birth and said the recent death of her mother - plus the disproportionately high mortality rates of expectant black mothers - meant another hospital visit would be ‘triggering’.

Instead, she welcomed her son submerged in a rented pool in the living room of her home in Moss Side. "My son was born at home; after the birth everyone left, we had a shower, we cleared the placenta because it was still attached and then we went to bed,” said the 39-year-old.

“It was so empowering to have control over what happens next. Being able to go to sleep in my own home and being able to wake up with a new baby, it was a beautiful experience.”

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“I’d say I supported my own birth rather than delivered my own baby," she joked.

“There were still midwives there and the father of my son, my sister and my grandmother. But I was very adamant about how I wanted it."

Naomi says she was warned by medics of the potential dangers of delivering her baby herself, adding: "They told me I could die and that I wasn’t going to have a home birth and had to get it out of my own head.

"I just had my mum pass away in a hospital and it was very triggering to even be in a hospital on top of everything I’d learned.”

Naomi was well prepared to give birth to her son way before the big day in June 2018. Before falling pregnant, she had been training to become a doula.

The word doula comes from the Greek language meaning slave, but over the years the definition has