Actually, experienced mid-wives are very good at recognizing problems before they become serious problems. At some point, I was running out of energy and starting to struggle. They have monitoring equipment for the baby, and checked on her first to make sure she was fine. They talked about transporting me, but decided to give me a tablespoon of honey first. It worked, and we were done with a healthy, happy outcome shortly after that.

With midwives, you actually have human attention on you during a birth, rather than doctors and nurses that drop in occasionally and can miss stuff. My hospital birth came closer to having problems because there was another emergency on the floor and no one paid attention to me for hours (when perhaps they should have).