Another OB question
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If all is going normally, which would highly likely be the case, Obs pretty much wont be there until you start pushing anyway, if they actually make it! My Ob missed the first birth and the second he was on holidays and I had his back-up, who wasn't even going to come in and check me early on a Saturday morning, but she happened to be in the area. So I would have had both without and Ob and nothing went wrong.
I am not sure but I think the midwives are obliged to call them when you are ready to push - I will get that confirmed. But you can put it in your birth plan or tell the midwives when you arrive that you don't want the Ob to be there until as late as they allow, as you want to give yourself the best chance to birth without intervention - I did that with my first and I beat him to it
That said, I would still do lots of reading and research into active birth and working with pain (some great articles on the main site), so you know and understand how you can best work with pain - because when you get there and even if you say now that you don't want the Ob there, you still might get into a pain 'crisis' and start asking for pain relief, for which the Ob will need to be called and you will need to be more closely or constantly monitored (depending on your choice of pain relief) and he will more likely need to be there at some earlier stage.
So this is why great support is so important at the birth, having someone who wont freak out seeing you in so much pain and telling you it's all okay and normal, unless otherwise indicated by the midwives. So many emergency caesarians are performed for 'failure to progress' these days, but you can understand why we have failure to progress when there are so many issues of fear and we are most often birthing in strange, foreign environments. Our bodies are just like other mammals, they like to find a safe, comfortable place to birth and if we don't feel safe or are scared, then our bodies can stop progressing in labour. This can happen both in hospital and at home - a woman can feel like it is unsafe in both places and her labour can stop. When you are in labour, your brain switches from operating from the front part of the brain you normally use and goes to the more primative, instinctive brain stem (in simple terms!). So all these amazing things happen to our bodies so we can birth our babies.
Ps. There is an article on the main site in the men's section "Supporting Her In Labour" - aimed at men. It can be printed if you find it useful for your partner
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You guys make it sound all so simple 
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