A mother is backing calls to tackle a chronic shortage of midwives.

Victoria Young had to ask her neighbour to help when she gave birth to her second child at home in Brighton last year.

The 25-year-old had arranged for a home birth but when the time came there was no midwife available.

Fortunately the neighbour was a qualified midwife who worked at Worthing Hospital and was able to help with the delivery.

Ms Young, who now lives in Seaford with partner Adam McLean, 27, is one of 150 women known to the National Childbirth Trust who wanted home births but struggled to get midwifery care.

The organisation said the shortage of midwives was jeopardising the Government's promise to allow every healthy women with low-risk pregnancies the chance to give birth at home.

Chief executive Belinda Phipps said: "In the past, women were told home births weren't safe.

Now this has changed and the Government is actively encouraging women to choose from a range of birth options but women are finding they can't get the services they have been promised."

A spokesman for the Royal College of Midwives said: "What is happening contravenes what the Government has proposed. Unless the number of midwives is increased, this situation is going to get worse."

The Government has declared that by 2009, every woman will have a choice about where and how she has her baby and will be supported by the same midwife throughout her pregnancy.

Last week, however, the Royal College of Midwives revealed two thirds of maternity units were understaffed, more than one in five heads of midwifery had reported a cut in the number of midwives at their trusts and 66 per cent of those trusts were in debt.

Home births have increased in popularity in recent years, with advocates pointing to the comfort of familiar surroundings. There were 17,279 home births in Britain in 2005 compared to 15,198 in 2004.

Ms Young, who also has a 23- month-old son Theo, gave birth to Sadie-Rose on September 8.

She said: "Theo was a home birth and right from the start of my second pregnancy I made it completely clear that I wanted the same again. It was on my records throughout."

She started to have contractions shortly before 5am on September 8 and called the midwifery unit at Brighton's Royal Sussex County Hospital at about 5.30am.

She was told the unit was closed to home births that day and the hospital was not in a position to send a midwife out.

Ms Young said: "I insisted it had been booked in and I urgently needed a midwife and was told to try again after 7am when the shift changed. I called again at 7.10am and said I really needed a midwife and they agreed to send one out.

"She arrived at around 7.55am but Sadie-Rose had already been born 20 minutes earlier. It was a very upsetting and stressful time.

I was having painful contractions and trying to cope with that but had to argue on the phone at the same time to get the service I had asked for."

A spokesman for Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust said it was totally committed to providing all women with a choice of where they gave birth.

The unit at the Royal Sussex has been operating under an emergency plan because of a spate of staff shortages.

Head of midwifery Carol Drummond told The Argus in November that although managers allowed for sickness, holidays and maternity leave, they had not expected to have 11 midwives on maternity leave at the same time.