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Objective: The midwife assisting a birth has a considerable impact on the woman's experience of the birth. The aim of this study was to investigate the experience of the midwife´s professional skills among women in Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden who chose a planned homebirth.Design and setting: All known homebirth midwives were asked to inform the mothers about the project and invited them to complete a questionnaire regarding different aspects of their homebirth experience.Method: The women were asked to assess ten different aspects of the midwifes´ professional skills on a four-graded scale below the main question: What was your experience of the midwife who assisted the labor? Furthermore, the mothers' experiences with the attending midwives were identified in the free text birth stories. The chosen method was a mixed method design.Findings: The experience of the home birth midwives ´professional skills was generally high scored. No statistically significant differences were found regarding the assessment of the midwife. The content analyses yielded one overarching theme: The competence and presence of the midwife creates a safe haven, and three categories, Midwife´s safe hand, Midwife´s caring approach and Midwife´s peaceful presence.Conclusion: Women choosing a home birth in the four Nordic countries experienced that their midwives were highly skilled and they found the presence of the midwives significant in helping them to feel safe and confident during birth. Despite differences in organization and guidelines for home births, the women´s experience of the midwife´s professional skills didn´t differ between the four countries.2

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