Letter: Home and dry

I HOPE the new doubts over the safety of water births ('Swimming with the trend', 17 October) don't cause women to leap back on to the delivery-room table. The best place for a normal birth is still the place where a woman feels most comfortable. The fashion for birth pools seems to stem from a misunderstanding of what constitutes a 'natural environment'.

I have great sympathy for whales, but I have never laboured under the illusion that I am one. Neither am I a forest-dweller or cavewoman. To pretend to be any of these would be absurd, and the moment of giving birth is no time to attempt pretension.

As a 20th-century, Western human being, I judge my 'natural environment' to be my own living room: for the birth of my second child I enlisted the help of an experienced midwife, invested in a large plastic sheet, and had the baby on the living-room floor. I'd recommend it.

Caroline Hull

London SW19